By Ugoji Egbujo

The Vampire is on the loose. And jitters have spread. He can’t remember just how many he has killed and how many millions ,in ransom, he has collected. They are too many to be remembered. But he remembers coming to Lagos and storming the house of one of his girl friends and killing the girl and everyone in the house. Everything he does, he does savagely. The girl, he alleged, stole his 45 million naira. And he executed her family. Not that he has earned any money in his entire life – his criminal career started precociously at age 11. When the DSS snared and caged him a year ago, his criminal career seemed all but ended. And the region heaved a sigh of relief. That was before he bought over the whole prison. Many accounts suggest imprisonment didn’t dampen his criminal propensity. With a prison system that has too many officials available , ready to be bought and hired, Chibueze Henry’s wings didn’t remain clipped for long.

But the only difference between Vampire and many other lords that litter our rickety prison system is his extreme ruthlessness which attracts notoriety. Others otherwise as imperious are scattered all over the nation, quietly, dominating the prisons and running rings around the law. Corruption doesn’t just birth impunity it fattens it to dangerous sizes. Vampire’s gang strolled into the Owerri high court last week , shot at hapless warders, took away Vampire and set 48 others criminals fluttering away. Judges hiding under tables isn’t a good sight . But corruption ultimately leads to the desecration of the sacred. The judges that day squirreled into holes. The amoured police vehicle kept at the Judiciary gates stood like a statue while policemen dropped their guns and fled. Evidently , corruption, in the end, endangers everyone.

A free ravenous vampire is an apocalyptic nightmare.  Witnesses, security officials, real and imagined enemies are all vulnerable. It is reported that in the melee that gang foisted on the Owerri high court that evil day, he found the composure to personally shoot a particular prison warder. That in itself tells the danger. The very notion that a serial murderer in prison can break loose so easily, in the vicinity of the seat of government in Owerri, is as sickening as it is frightening. Every criminal justice system relies on witnesses , police and judicial officers who must trust the system for their safety. This case is a national security priority.

The state government scrambled a security meeting and placed a paltry 5m naira on such an enormous head. The prison Comptroller General rose from his slumber in Abuja to carry out pretentious raids at the Owerri prisons. He found hundreds of mobile phones and laptops, concrete evidences of the entrenched laxity that enabled Vampire. Without strict supervision, the prisons can become criminal heavens. And thoroughly, Kirikiri maximum prison has become such a center. But rather than institute proper inquiries into the Vampire escape and improve the system through scientific findings, shallow makeshift measures , by people worried only about their jobs will prevail. And the prisons will continue their decay.

The decay in the prisons is systemic and pervasive. That Owerri prison , like the Kirikiri , is so overcrowded that no meaningful rehabilitation can commence there. The overcrowding exists because too many people who have no business being in prison are in prison. Our slovenly criminal justice process has only one conveyor belt. People are remanded in prison for minor infractions, for meager unsettled fines. Only an insignificant minority of inmates are convicts. But many handed custodial sentences could have been processed differently. Our probation service is almost non existent, so community service as a retributive option is hardly explored. Without efficient state counsels for indigent accused persons many are left to rot in prison because they have no legal representation. Some on remand now live perpetually in the prisons, their case files have gone missing for years. Those in prison therefore feel no need for repentance. They only feel unlucky. The overcrowding of the prison may not be directly responsible for Vampire’s escape but it helps create and diffuses cynicism which affects even the warders and corrodes integrity.

Our prisons are old and poorly maintained. The inmates are shabbily treated. No ethical codes can thrive where chaos , physical and psychological , has taken root. Basic rights are sold and bought as privileges. Human dignity is made utterly negotiable, dispensable. If the prisons had good livable accommodation, inmates won’t live like animals in pens and warders won’t metamorphose into extortionists. If the warders were properly trained and adequately motivated they won’t let their wives become petty contractors and food hawkers in prisons. And how can the quality of food served prisoners ever improve when warders supplement their income selling food to inmates.

Corruption thrives so brazenly in our prisons it squelches all seeds of correction sown in those prisons. The corruption in the prisons is a shade more sinful than that at police roadblocks. The victimization of incarcerated poor people under all circumstances is extraordinarily heinous. The inmates are not just more vulnerable than motorists, they are perpetually vulnerable behind high walls and iron bars.  You go to visit an inmate in any Nigerian prison you are compelled to pass through two toll gates.  So you must shed at least 200 naira per visit per person. And it happens in the open and in every prison. Institutionalized corruption doesn’t fret.  A ‘good’ bed space will cost you 250,000 naira at the KiriKiri maximum prison. This was the price before the fall of the naira. Your options are few. You could be kept in the condemned prisoners cell. There, you will meet a leaking bucket of urine and faeces in a room meant for one occupied by eight.  The condemned prisoners cell? Don’t go there! Its very existence is a crime against humanity. What the general prison environment does is to foster a confused moral climate that cannot help a convict find redemption.

Prisons all over the world are called colleges of crime for a reason. But our prisons that do not even pretend to be rehabilitative must be flourishing crime colleges. We must hesitate therefore to send youngsters guilty of misdemeanors to our poorly supervised, soul-seering prisons. A free intercourse between a criminal like Vampire and our merely rascally but incarcerated youths in Owerri prison must be forbidden. The society must then rethink how it processes youth crimes even before it begins to rebuild the prisons.

Vampire’s reign in Owerri prison is tragically familiar. It is hoped his escape doesn’t herald a new trend. The society celebrates money. The warders who granted him special privileges aren’t a few bad apples. The tree is rotten, root and branch. Petty thieves must have watched in envy as he dominated the prison. The idea that crime pays and pays even in prison is unfortunately in our country. His escape is a lesson for the criminal justice system and the society. The worship of money is the root of all evil.

My condolences to all the victims of that attack.