Held in derision on account of its inherent weaknesses, the Nigerian prison system is constantly being exploited by criminal elements. Its deep-rooted defects came to light in July when 13 inmates executed a daring escape from the Koton-Karfe Prison in Kogi State. The travesty occurred again on Tuesday when between 15 and 25 inmates escaped overnight from the Nsukka Prisons in Enugu State. Twelve of the fugitives were re-arrested in the two incidents. Frequent jailbreaks make a mockery of our prison system, a clue that our national correctional facilities are not offering much help in reforming incarcerated people.
Constantly hit by jailbreaks, the prison in Koton-Karfe has become notorious. Two such audacious breaks have occurred at the ramshackle prison in the past six years, one of them in 2010. It also came under a bomb attack in February 2012 from Boko Haram jihadists, who freed 119 out of its 120 inmates, mostly members of their salafist sect; a prison warder died in the attack. Nigerian Prisons Service officials were only able to recapture 25 of the fugitives.
But it is not only in Koton-Karfe that criminals have recorded a good success rate. In December 2014, Boko Haram unleashed mayhem on a newly-built penal centre in Tunga, Niger State. The Islamists freed 200 prisoners, while only 10 were recaptured the following day. A month before, about 300 prisoners had escaped when gunmen bombed the penitentiary in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State.
This is a dangerous trend, which the government should put an end to. Jailbreaks compound our tenuous security architecture. Dangerous elements, who are supposed to be in gaol, return to the society to cause more havoc. This constitutes a real security risk. For instance, three of the felons that escaped from Ekiti prison in 2014 – Boluwaji Olawumi, John Isaac and Wale Fagboyegun – were re-arrested six months after by the police in Oyo State following their involvement in another robbery incident in Ibadan. They had allegedly robbed a woman of her car earlier in Akure, Ondo State, before heading for Ibadan.
In reality, this is a trend that is not likely to recede until a drastic action is taken to address it. There should be a concerted strategy by the NPS Controller-General, Ja’afaru Ahmed, and the Minister of the Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, to reform a system that allowed two inmates – Solomon Amodu and Maxwell Ajukwu – to breach the security network in the Kuje Prisons in June, and flee back into the underworld. The NPS should map out a well-defined strategy to countermand this weakness in the system.
But the system is beset with other troubles: congestion, obsolete facilities, lack of drugs and uniform for inmates. The latest statistics from the NPS confirm that, as of June, the 241 prisons in Nigeria were bulging at the seams. There are 17,879 convicted prisoners and 45,263 awaiting trial inmates, making a total of 63,142. The catch is that the combined total installed capacity of the prisons is 50,153, leaving them overcrowded to the tune of 12,989 inmates. This encourages rebellion in the ranks of prisoners.
In Kano Prisons, for example, the two cells for condemned criminals are supposed to accommodate 20 prisoners, but had 92 when Dambazzau visited the facility in January. “(The) Kano Prisons Service Command needs urgent transfer of condemned criminals because, at present, our cells for CC are overstretched,” an official said. Other prison formations suffer similar privations. Therefore, the minister should aim at expanding capacity. Many of the prisons were built with mud bricks in the colonial era when the inmate population was insignificant. They have no toilets –an aberration.
Other jurisdictions tweak and fortify their prisons to prevent jailbreaks and Nigeria has no excuse not to do the same. When Mexican authorities recaptured Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the notorious drug lord, for the eighth time last year, they devised a new method of constantly changing his cells to prevent him from undermining the system once more. After a jailbreak in the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York, United States, in June, in which two inmates absconded, state authorities empanelled an investigation that uncovered how prison employees were aiding the prisoners. Two employees indicted were consequently jailed.
The NPS should learn from this. Last month, media reports detailed how a female warder, Mary Ikenye, was sacked for smuggling beer to inmates at the Kirikiri Prisons in Lagos. There have also been allegations that officials smuggle drugs to inmates and allow them to enjoy illegal privileges such as using cell-phones and being let out at night to attend social functions. Somebody is certainly not doing his or her job or aiding and abetting the jailbreaks. Such a culprit should be fished out and punished. Until people start taking responsibility for their acts of commission or omission, jailbreaks will continue to be a matter of frequent occurrence.
But we need to operate an efficient, reformative prison system, using our federalism to an advantage by devolving power to the federating units. It is sensible to decentralise the prison structure and allow states willing to build their own prisons to do so. This will take off the pressure from the Federal Government and infuse sanity into the system.
A jail term should not translate to a ruined life. The Interior Ministry should broaden the scope of education and artisanal training programmes for inmates already established in some prisons, while state governors and chief judges should grant pardons to deserving detainees regularly to decongest the prisons. The NPS should train its officers in modern operations and make them proactive to stem the tide of jailbreaks.
