BY EVELYN USMAN
About 35, 000 out of 52,754 suspects in various prisons across the country are awaiting trials for various offences, prison authorities said yesterday in Lagos, pointing out that the high number of prisoners was hampering reformation efforts for the inmates.

At the Kirikiri Maximum prison, Lagos, for instance, there were 752 male inmates , out of which 418 of them were awaiting trial persons, while the Medium Security Prisons had 2,248 awaiting trials out of 2,395 inmates.

Spokesman for the Nigerian Prisons, Mr Raphael Odeyemi, spoke during a tour of the three prisons in Kirikiri, blaming the yawning gap between convicted and awaiting trial persons on the criminal justice system in Nigeria.

“This is giving the prison administration a lot of problems because it is difficult for a prison officer to reform somebody who is awaiting trial .

He will tell you that he is not ready to learn any vocation in the prison because he has not been proven guilty . But those who are sentenced could easily be convinced to either go into vocational skills like tailoring, carpentry, laundry and wood work.

But it is morally unfair for us to approach somebody who is awaiting trial”, Odeyemi said.

He however said that feeding of inmates was one area taken seriously by the present administration, as part of its reformation process.

Ten bags of cassava flour popularly called garri, three bags of rice, one and half bag of beans and other condiments , reserved at the Maximum Prison kitchen store, according to the officer in-charge, were to be consumed by the inmates before the end of the month,with the expectation of new stock within the same period.

However, it was observed that inmates at the Maximum Security Prisons, were selective in terms of how they wanted their food prepared. For instance, while some of them reportedly wanted their beans cooked ordinarily, others, wanted theirs as bean pottage.