This write-up aims at exposing the very nature of the Nigerian prisons, how they are managed and the factors that keep the detainees and other inmates sub-human-like.
The term “prison” owes credence to the Latin word “prendere” which can notes “to seize” or to “confiscate”.
The Oxford Advanced Dictionary defines the term “prison” as a building in which wrongdoers are kept locked up: a place where a person is shut up against his will: confinement in such a building in the view of using prisons for punishment. Their reformative theory holds that by reforming the character of the criminal, he or she and other people are deterred from committing the same kind of offence in the future. Their retributive theory views imprisonment as a way of balancing the moral order which is upset by crime.
The introduction of prisons in Nigeria was the courtesy of the colonialism. Colonial Masters used native prison to compel obedience from the native through the native rulers.
Four broad categories of inmates are found in the Nigerian prisons
1. The Awaiting Trails detainees
2. The Convicted
3. The Condemned
4. The Asylum Patients
People in the first category are those whose cases have not been visited. Most of them are not aware of why they are in prison. A statistical inquiry shows that about 45 percent of inmates in Nigerians prisons are still awaiting trials. Their condition provokes a questioning of justice and management in our prisons. The average detainees will stay for more than ten years before their case has been visited. Shockingly, files belonging to these detainees disappear on the intervention of concerned citizens but reappear when bribes are offered.
Justice is raped. The section 32(3) of the 1979 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria states that any person who is arrested or detained should be informed within 24 hours in writing of the facts and grounds for his arrest or detention. It is well known that the very act of detention, imprisonment or punishment without trial violates the natural right which presumes one innocent until proven guilty. What they face in the prisons will be elaborated in the next section but I must emphasize that justice delayed is justice denied!
The statement of the prison’s act No.9 of 1972 made it clear that prisons are not designed for the punishment of inmates but rather a move to identify the cause of their anti-social behaviors and to set in motion machineries for correcting their faults so that they may return to the society as useful and law abiding citizens.
Prison Act cap 366 of 1990; the Prisons Act of 1992 and Prisons Act of 1960 should also be taken into consideration. These rights range from the right to life, accommodation, food, medical care, legal assistance to fair and speedy trial. Unfortunately, the antithesis of these rights is experienced in Nigerian prisons today and the following limitations glaringly manifest themselves.
1. Inadequate Feeding: The prisoners are offered the poorest quality of food, which is also unbalanced with good quantity. Even the little they are offered is eaten in filthy and dirty cells, unhealthy for food consumption.
2. Accommodation/ Overcrowding: This is the most irritating problem in most Nigerian prisons. To substantiate this assertion, a cell at Ikoyi Lagos Prisons of 500 inmates is used for more than 2000 inmate. Still, in some cells, bedrooms, toilets, dinning halls and living rooms are combined together. Is it not terrible?
3. Poor Medicare: Due to the inadequate accommodation and unbalanced feeding, inmates contact diseases such as rashes, Pneumonia, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases. Drugs are insufficient, therefore victims pass to fellow inmates the diseases contacted. This is actually responsible for the high rate of mortality in our prisons today.
4. Social/ Psychological Problems: Our prisoners are cut off from amenities that identify man as a social animal. These include articles of clothing, portable water, and electricity and communication network. Most of the inmates who are under detention are traumatized due to the fact that most of them do not know the reason(s) why they are there.
5. Moral/ Spiritual Problems: Other crimes are at alarming rate in Nigerian prisons a place why people came to be corrected. Part of the problem is caused by alienation of wives from their husbands who happen to be in th prisons: and restriction of visitors to the inmates. Spiritual activities also are not permitted to the fullness in some prisons that is why the prisoners become worst and coming back to the society to commit greater crimes than before; a typical example is the recent Ikoyi Lagos Nigeria Prison Case of Prisoners putting the Prison Yard into fire.
Concluding, I wish to state here that our aim has been to disclose the fact that the stay of the majority of the inmates in most Nigerian prisons today is quite unjustifiable.
But then, the pertinent question is: in practical response, what can we contribute towards a more humanized management of the Nigerian prisons? I must make a clarion call to the government in its entirety charging it to wake up from its slumber and embrace justice.
However, while appreciating the efforts of some non- governmental organizations and Civil Society Organizations like CIDJAP, Nnado Foundation Inc., JDPC, FIDA and other foreign bodies, some groups like the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) have a very vital role to play.
By and large it is the responsibility of all to supplement and help in solving the problems of our brothers and sisters being dehumanized in the cells. By so doing, we shall be fulfilling the biblical injunction: “I was in prison and you visited me.”
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