- Says extensive reforms that directly affect lives of inmates in Correctional Centres imperative
“Sexual harassment of women and girls, even of toddlers and infants in our society…has become increasingly alarming and by all accounts has assumed something of an epidemic! Sexual assaults…in the farms, in the alleys, in the pathways, in the markets, at home, in the offices high and low… It has become a scourge!” – Ngozi Okogbue
For Lady Ngozi Okogbue, KSJI, sexual harassment is not just predatory – “submission to it robs the female … of her life, her peace and her integrity.” Speaking with the Law & Society Magazine team, this Chairperson of FIDA Nigeria Abuja Correctional Services Centres Committee also called for more extensive reforms in different areas affecting lives of inmates in Correctional Centres.
The swelling population in Nigeria’s ill maintained and decrepit correctional centres (prisons) has been attributed to excessive use of pre-trial detention, and the use of prison for minor, and petty offences. As reported by Patrick Okon, content developer at InfoGuideNigeria.com: “Any crime committed by an individual, be it misdemeanour or felony, is punishable by law. An incarcerated individual still has his or her rights although some may be restrained… A lawbreaker is not sentenced to imprisonment to die due to congestion, transmittable diseases, poor quality food or any of the plethora of deplorable conditions plaguing all Nigerian prisons…” But the Nigerian story is far from ideal. Ngozi Okogbue maintains that beyond improvements in physical structures in Correctional Centres extensive reforms are required in that directly affect lives of inmates.
L&S: Tell us about Lady Ngozi Okogbue.
Answer: I was born to my wonderful parents, Ezeani Ichie Simeon Obegolu of Obeledu, in Anambra State, then a teacher, and his loving wife Bernadette Obegolu nee Okoye. Way back then, they put me through school somewhat early in life. I literally ran through the systems, emerging later as a Science graduate, BSc. Zoology, of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1975. In 1988 I obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) from the University of Port Harcourt.
Towards the last quarter of my tour of duty in the Federal Public Service with theNational Directorate of Employment (NDE), where I finally attained the rank of a Director prior to my retirement, I enrolled to study Law. I graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Abuja in 2005 and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2007. Law is therefore a second degree for me.
L&S: How has the Law practice been for you?
Answer: As we all know, Law as a discipline is indeed gargantuan so to speak, bestriding all aspects of life and human endeavour. Without therefore necessarily involving oneself in the more obvious areas of litigious or even corporate or commercial Law, one finds sufficient satisfaction in employing the knowledge of the Law in the numerous other aspects of normal living especially for the benefit of ordinary people, women and children. It has been a great experience.
L&S: You are the Chairperson of the FIDA Nigeria Abuja Correctional Services Centres Committee; a Committee that has been doing exceptionally well in reaching out to the inmates in our correctional facilities. What are the challenges your committee has encountered in the course of your visits of the correctional centres?
Answer: Thank you so much for the generosity of your commendation. Indeed, I have been the Chair of the Correctional Service Centres Committee, formerly the Prisons Visitation Committee for the terms of two Excos of FIDA in a row, a rather long period of time by the nature of such appointments. However, it has indeed been some experience and has tended to open even more to me the esoteric vista of life in society particularly the importance and imperatives of citizens staying within the bounds of the law.
Life in custodial centres can be quite limiting, restricting and a drudgery. My Committee in trying to assuage some of those experiences, fairly regularly undertakes visits to the inmates, more especially the female inmatesin order to interact with them and determine their areas of need and therefore our areas of possible intervention. As Lawyers, our expertise is applied in the areas of their legal needs, and they are often many, which we ascertain through mounting of Legal Clinics for the inmates. Such exercises help them to exhale, as it were, enabling them to ventilate their manyissues and concerns.
Over and beyond this, we attempt to provide a variety of necessaries and other provisions for the inmates. These all have financial implications, finances which we must source ourselves either from amongst us as FIDAns or also from other public spirited individuals as well as through collaborations with some philanthropic and other organizations. Funding and finance are therefore without a doubt, a veritable challenge.
In addition to the above, with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become, unlike the pre-pandemic period, almost herculean to obtain access to some of the Centres, understandably, one should add.
L&S: Are correctional centres in Nigeria equipped to dispense their duties?
Answer: Upfront, I would say that from the facilities one has observed in the Correctional Services Centres and their state and capacity, a lot of work and upgrade is not just necessary but mandatory. As we all know, some of these facilities constructed decades ago were designed to provide for and accommodate very few people but they have now becomehome to multiples of the numbers originally intended.
It goes without saying of course, that in upgrading such facilities, due and necessary advertence must be had to such other issues as the occasional inadvertent incarceration of young children, some at the breast, who willy-nilly serve out terms of imprisonment with their mothers for crimes they are clearly innocent and entirely oblivious of.
Over and beyond the improvements in the physical structures and facilities in the Correctional Centres suggested, more extensive reforms in the different areas affecting the lives of the inmates are seriously, very seriouslyadvocated. And they are many.
L&S: What is your take on alleged sexual harassment and violations of female inmates?
Answer: Sexual harassment of women and girls, even of toddlers and infants in our society, from reports in the public space, has become increasingly alarming and by all accounts has assumed something of an epidemic! Sexual assaults appear to be simply ubiquitous currently – in the farms, in the alleys, in the pathways, in the markets, at home, in the offices high and low, in various types of institutions, everywhere, it seems, even in healing homes, spiritual and otherwise. It has become a scourge! So, although no case of sexual abuse was personally reported to me in the Correctional Centres, given the audacity with which such acts reportedly go on in the larger society where people are ostensibly relatively free, the fate of the vulnerable anywhere confined as they arein this case would therefore be better imagined. And this would be where the work of my Committee would come in, inan interventionist capacity if during the Legal Clinics earlier mentioned such reports are received.
Meanwhile, the Authorities of the Centres would be called upon to rise up to the challenge and not only mete out adequate punishments to such sexual villains whenever and if discovered but also ensure that only individuals of proven integrity are to be found within the ranks of the workforce of the Correctional Centres at any time material.
L&S: Some female lawyers have also alleged sexual harassment in their workplaces. What best strategy can they use?
Answer: As I had pointed out earlier, offices and workplaces of variousdescriptions have reported their own fair share of sexual assaults and sexual harassment. It has become a plague!
In an office situation, I would be inclined to regard that phenomenon as a predator/prey scenario, the preys being the more disadvantageously positioned and therefore, again thevulnerable since as workers, they must depend on such sexual predators, usually their bosses and superior officersfor their continued stay at their jobs which ultimately assures their daily bread.
But quite frankly, a female lawyer must realize that she is sui generis in these situations, she is a creature apart, a lady ahead of the pack and if she truly earned and deserves that appellation of ‘Lawyer’, she just must walk the talk for as it is said, noblesse oblige. And nobody in her right mind should accept to eat the bread that lodges immovable in her throat choking the life out of her, least of all, a Lawyer. Submission to sexual predation is even worse. It rubs the female lawyer of both her life, her peace and her integrity.
My advice? Take a walk with your head held high and your integrity (and by the way, it is also the integrity of your parents and family) intact. When one door closes, a better one opens, is conventional wisdom. You will survive, if you dare well yourself to. Hard it may be, but everyone who is determined ultimately does.
L&S: What can you say about the effect of COVID-19 on the Correctional Centres in Nigeria and the inmates in particular?
Answer: Correctional Service Centres are generally receptacles for large numbers of people in our society,people who have found themselves at the wrong end of the law. The Authorities are therefore understandably wary of interactions and contacts of the inmates with visitors during disease outbreaks such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, they try to observe the necessary COVID-19 protocol as best they can. It would appear that all that have paid off because not much in terms of reports of outbreaks of the COVID-19 have been heard among the inmates.
The reduction in the number of visitors might have resulted however in the reduction of various forms of aids available to the inmates, all told.
L&S: In discharging your duties as the Chair of the Correctional Services Centres Committee, do you collaborate with other organisations to ensure that inmates get the best help they can?
Answer: O yes, we do. I already made some allusion to that earlier. The human life and the human condition in its variegatedness demands different types of attention virtually all the time. In undertaking our mandate therefore, we endeavour to consider the various aspects of need of the inmates. The aspect of the human health is of primary importance and therefore we often collaborate with the Medical Women Association to provide for the medical needs of the female inmates as well as Optometric services by Women in Optometry and other medical needs.
The various media arms are also some of our very importantcollaborators. They visit the Centres with us and report on what we do. With respect to various other items such as foodstuff, the Al Muhibbah foundation is a collaborator of note. They have indeed been quite supportive and have on occasions helped us in offsetting some of the fines which at times hold back otherwise discharged inmates in custody. In addition to all these, we also have some other occasional collaborators.
Kindly permit me to use this opportunity to thank all of them and tocommend them and all else including very importantly, members of FIDA, Abuja Branch, who have always in one way or the other enriched our activities and become part of our success story through their donations and generosity.
L&S: What can you say about the justice system in Nigeria, is it really the last hope of the common man?
Answer: The society of man is a society of the Law. Structured law is what makes us human and distinguishes us from the lower forms of life, even of primates. A society without laws is a society of anarchy.
Before the advent of law as we now know it, it was Thomas Hobbes that held that man lived in a state of nature where life was “nasty, brutish and short!“ Modern man is therefore governed by laws and statutes, the infringement of which are to be visited by known punishments without regard to personal social status, all persons being equal before the Law.
It is the Justice system of any country that ensures that the laws of the land are obeyed. The system stands as the Impartial Arbiter between individuals, persons and groups ensuring that justice is not only done but seen to have been manifestly done between the parties regardless of any other considerations but the facts of each matter and the applicable law. To that extent and for as long as that is the case, the Justice system remains the last hope of the Common man both in Nigeria and elsewhere. It remains for the Ministers in that hallowed Temple of Justice to guard well their hands, their heads and their spirit in their own interest and the interest of posterity, aware of the dictum of Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, JSC, who described Justice as a three-way street.
L&S: At over 60, what is the secret of your good looks?
Answer: Well, thank you for being generous to me with your compliments.
For one thing, I firmly believe that if our Mighty God and Creator of the Universe at the end of creation pronounced everything beautiful, then we are all definitely beautiful. And in the nature of things, every age has its own inner beauty. I just try to appropriate mine. Thanks again.
L&S: Given the opportunity of another life, would you study law?
Answer: It is not for nothing that Lawyers are regarded as “learned” and further described as persons belonging to the “noble profession.” Information maketh a man, information is power. A lawyer by the nature of his or her calling though deeply knowledgeable in Law, is expected to know at least something of every aspect of life, every other discipline or at least, to seek that knowledge especially when necessary.
Being myself initially a student of the Sciences, I found my foray into the study of the discipline of Law, though demanding in terms of the time requirement, an exhilarating experience. Studying Law, one becomes now exposed to rather more familiar concepts and issues of the human nature, issues more readily identifiable with. And one is placed better in a position to help solve some human problems and suggest solutions to others.
Yes, I would not hesitate to study Law again.
L&S: What is your advice to young lawyers who look up to you as a role model?
Answer: Well, that Rome was not built in a day but that for the period the building was going on, it was a lot of hard work demanding that the eyes be effectively trained on the ball. That with focus and commitment, it is all doable. The place of prayer in all of that should never be taken lightly too.
L&S: You’re now a retiree and grandmother of many, how do you relax?
Answer: At times, I do wonder if I do really relax in actual sense, for although I am retired from regular paid employment, there is always and always one thing or the other that needs my time, energy and attention, requests to do this or that, to attend this meeting or the other, to go helpdo this or the other. And by the way, my WhatsApp messages bearing most of these and which I must necessarily attend to are enough to make me demand a salary from any willing person! Things are such that when for all of one hour or soI am not apparently doing anything, I feel almost like … something is not right!
Not forgetting that there’s money to be made, of course.
In addition, I like to think that I generally like and respect people. I therefore like engaging in good natured, enlightening and enlivening banter with great friends and family. But for all of that, hanging out with my children and grandchildren is the real aphrodisiac!
L&S: What are your hobbies?
Answer: Not much really under the circumstances but I like to sing a bit and to do the occasional walk.Window shopping when possible can be exciting.
And in Abuja, I like to watch and listen to the rains whenever they return.
Thank you so much, for your time.
