Revamping Nigeria’s Criminal Justice System

By Sonnie Ekwowusi

I don’t know about you but I must confess that I am still unable to come to terms with the name correctional centres, the new name of the Nigerian prisons. Why? Because Nigerian prisons are not correctional centres: they are punishment centres, or, poignantly, human dignity violation centres. The Nigerian prisons, for lack of better expression, are hells on earth notwithstanding the change of their names to correctional centers. And since there is no correction in hell no prisoner can regain his humanity after passing through any of the Nigerian prisons. By the way, I don’t know why we like fighting skirmishes and symptoms instead of main problems. For instance, the name of NEPA has been changed to Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). Has that improved electricity supply in Nigeria? No. We are still experiencing the same, if not aggravated, erratic and epileptic electricity supply. The uniform of the police has been changed. So what? Has that changed the extortionist mindset, defeatist psychology and corruptibility of the Nigeria police? No. The policeman in the new police uniform has not changed. He is the same corruptible man.

In the same vein, the Nigerian prisons have not changed notwithstanding their new baptismal name. The last time I visited the prison in the company with members of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Premier Branch, I saw for myself the hellish dungeons now called correctional centres. I interviewed about 23 prisoners all of them victims of miscarriage of justice. They had been dumped and forgotten in prison without bail, without arraignment, without trial. In case you don’t know, about 70% of prisoners in Nigerian prisons are Awaiting Trial Inmates (ATM), that is, prisoners who have not been charged, tried and convicted by any court of law. There are over 28,000 ATM languishing in the various prisons across the federation. No institution can give what it does not have. The inhuman condition and maltreatment of prisoners in Nigerian prisons are not correctional measures: they are punitive measures. The truth of the matter is that the Nigerian prisons are colonial relics- they were built during the colonial times by our erstwhile colonial masters and have not been rebuilt or reconstructed since that time despite the bourgesening population of prison inmates in the prisons. The over-bloating population has resulted in the over-congestion of the prisons. For example, a prison that has the capacity for 800 inmates, is over-bloating with 1, 700 inmates. No wonder the suffocating odious smell constantly oozes out from the prisons. Little wonder the Nigerian prisons suffer frequent outbreak of infectious diseases.

The most nauseating is that most of the ATM languishing in our various prisons had spent more than the number of years they would have spent, if from the outset, they had been charged to court, tried, convicted and sentenced. About one and half months ago, my lawyer friend Ben Abraham, founder and Executive Director, Zarephath AID (a Lagos-based NGO which over the last 17 years has been intervening in the challenges confronting Nigerian prisoners in the various Nigerian prisons) delivered a paper at the Helmbridge Study Centre on the challenges in the criminal justice administration in Nigeria with special emphasis on the plight of Nigerian prisoners in the various prisons across Nigeria. In his paper, Ben mentioned the name of a former prisoner, who, prior to coming in contact with Ben and regaining his freedom, had spent a grueling 8 years in prison as an ATM without trial in a court of law. Ben also mentioned how the new entrants to the prisons are punished by their senior fellow prisoners by ordering them to sleep in a toilet room containing a bucket of stinking human faeces and urine.

The most tragic is that about 3008 condemned prisoners presently on death row in the country’s 227 prisons are yet to be executed. Why? Because the various State Governors are not signing the death warrants for their execution as required by law. Last week Minister of Interior Rauf Aregbesola urged the State governors to sign the death warrants of convicts on death row who have exhausted all avenues of appeal. Aregbesola’s concern is understandable. In the last 25 years or so no State Governor has signed a death warrant endorsing the execution of any condemned prisoner. Now since the State Governors are still undecided on whether or not to sign the death warrants of the condemned prisoners languishing in our prisons the condemned prisoners should be released forthwith. To continue to keep them in prison to be agonizing there indefinitely is a violation of their right to life and personal dignity as enshrined in section 33 of the 1999 Constitution and Article 4 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and as decided by the court in Peter Nemi V Attorney-General of Lagos State. It is now trite law that the right to life is available even to condemned prisoners or prisoners on death row until their execution is carried out according to the law.

Therefore, the Buhari government should muster the political will to revamp our criminal justice delivery system. There should be massive decongestion of our various prisons to alleviate the untold inhuman sufferings of prisoners therein. Government should stop procrastinating and launch itself out to implement the various recommendations tabled before successive Nigerian governments on prison reforms. We have been waiting for long to see concrete actions and concrete results and prison reforms in Nigeria to no avail. All what we are treated with are mere rhetoric. But mere rhetoric cannot solve the problem. We need concrete actions and results. Apart from government intervention, public-spirited individuals, NGOs, Corporate organizations, Churches, Mosques and others should erect frameworks of solidarity in assisting prisoners. Beyond making money and answering big names, lawyers should render pro-bono legal services to ATMs in order to secure their freedom.

Moved by the plight of the ATM in Nigerian prisons, the last Obasanjo administration ordered for the immediate commencement of case-by-case audit of ATM who have spent upwards of five years in prisons including those who were held for minor offences; those whose case files were missing; those about sixty years of age; those with life-threatening diseases and those who had stayed on death row for upwards of ten years. The then Federal Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Chief Bayo Ojo SAN launched a massive Prison Decongestion Project aimed at facilitating the release of many inmates perpetually languishing in our various prisons. Chief Ojo even enlisted the services of some lawyers across the 36 States of the Federation to take up the cases of detainees languishing in various Nigerian prisons. The current Federal Attorney-General and Minister for Justice should emulate the good example of Chief Ojo. Vice-President Prof Yemi Osinbajo should do something. He is an expert in the Administration of Criminal Justice system. Lawyers and the judiciary cannot claim to have a pass mark when almost 80% of the detainees in our various prisons are victims of miscarriage of justice.