The Federal government has revealed that about seventy percent of serving inmates across the nation’s prisons are on awaiting trial.
Minister of Interior, Lt. General Abulrahman Dambazzau (rtd) dropped this hint in Abakaliki when he inspected the modern prisons facility under construction by the state governor, Engr. David Umahi.
“Over 70 percent of the inmates are awaiting trials and we need to deal with that issue; this cannot be dealt with by the Nigeria Prison Service alone”, he said.
Dambazzau, who condemned the disparity in the promotion of prison’s staff, noted that the federal government in its reform agenda have abolished unmerited promotion which he said was in practice in previous regimes.
“Nobody can be promoted from one rank to another without major requirements of course because what we found out is that few group of persons who formed the majority of service got promoted without merit.
“Some got theirs within 2-3 years without working for it, while others stay for 10-15 years without promotion. But the fact is that both groups don’t have motivation. So, we want to remove that so that merit would determine who get what,” he said.
He however charged states governors, court and the Nigerian Police to work together in addressing the challenges of decongestion and rehabilitation of inmates.
“To deal with the decongestion, you have to work with the court and police. and this is to ensure that the police must investigate properly.
“Secondly, the court must avoid unnecessary adjournment of cases while the Nigerian prisons should concentrate on special case of rehabilitation because it doesn’t make sense that when you send someone to prison he comes back worse than he was; that aspect we are also pursuing,” he said.
