It was with mixed feelings that Nigerians received the news of yet another prison break at the Koton Karfe Medium Security Correctional Centre in Kogi State. No fewer than 12 inmates escaped in the March incident, although five were recaptured soon after.
In November 2014, suspected Boko Haram members attacked the same custodial centre and set 140 inmates free. That 2014 attack was the second in two years and part of a string of physical breaches at correctional centres across Nigeria.
“Other examples of riots/jailbreaks in the Nigerian prisons include: The February 2004 riot in Ikoyi Prisons, the Port Harcourt Prison attack of 2005 and the Onitsha Prison attack of the same year,” cscanada.net, an online resource, said.
During the October 2020 #EndSARS protest, hoodlums numbering over 100 in Benin, the Edo State capital, launched coordinated attacks on the Benin and Oko prisons in the city, broke cells open and freed several inmates.
A few hours later, one of the inmates who had escaped from Oko Prison went to his village to kill a witness who had testified against him in court.
Between 2020 and 2021, no fewer than 5,238 inmates fled from various penitentiaries in 15 jailbreaks, the media reported.
From the foregoing, the correctional system needs a total overhaul. Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, expressed concern last year that since the change of nomenclature from Nigeria Prisons Service to Nigeria Correctional Service, jailbreaks had become more frequent.
In 2024, there was the shameful spectre of a crossdresser, Idris Okuneye aka Bobrisky, who was sentenced to six months imprisonment for abusing the naira, but allegedly did not spend his full term in custody.
Data from the Nigerian Correctional Service indicates that 53,254 inmates are currently awaiting trial in custodial centres out of about 79,863. Of the total number, 26,571 inmates are convicts, meaning that almost 70 per cent of the prison population is awaiting trial.
Recently, there was a discovery that 30 per cent of the population of correctional centres consisted of children. This is embarrassing.
Nigeria’s penal system is toxic. It is severely underfunded and faces significant challenges, including overcrowding, poor infrastructure, inadequate healthcare, and a lack of rehabilitation programmes, leading to inhumane conditions and hindering the system’s ability to reform inmates.
The high number of inmates strains resources. In January, the Federal Government increased the daily feeding allowance from N750 to N1,125 per inmate. This is grossly inadequate.
The justice system is deeply flawed and marred by undue delays, manual record-keeping, loss of files, and forced confessional statements being admitted to evidence without proper verification. The police indiscriminately haul innocents into prison.
Suspects are routinely subjected to dehumanising treatment while security agents have been accused of conniving with magistrates to dump suspects in custody.
It is plausible that many of the escapees from custodial centres have gone into armed robbery, banditry, terrorism, and kidnapping.
The perpetrators of the June 2022 killings at the St Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, were suspected to be members of ISWAP, some of whom had escaped from prison.
Positively, 1,229 inmates have graduated from the National Open University of Nigeria.
Finally, there should be true federalism in which the prisons will be devolved. States and local government areas should establish their custodial centres in a decentralised system.
These would hold suspects charged with crimes under the purview of states and LGAs.
The Federal Government had in the past said it would construct six new custodial centres and relocate those ones in heavily populated areas. It should do it.
It is important to ensure that cases are strictly vetted to ensure that persons who should not be in custody do not find their way there.
Prisons in many countries have been modernised. Such should be replicated in Nigeria. – Punch.
