Jail break: Lawyer push for decongestion of correction centres

A legal practitioner, Mr Edward Omaga, has called on the Federal Government to decongest correctional centres across the country in order to prevent jail breaks

Omaga, a principal partner, and Chairman, Board of Trustees of the legal consulting firm, made the call at the unveiling of the rebranded firm in Abuja.

“Decongesting the correction centres is what we should be doing now.

“We believe that you solve a problem before it arrives by preventing it.

“For instance, for somebody who has spent five years awaiting trial for stealing bicycle, how do you reconcile that? And another politician is released from prison after three months, either because of no conviction, or no case to substantiate. These are because of plea bargain.

“The young man who is in prison for five years because he steals a motorbike, or bicycle is so angry that he could do anything, even in the prison. And that is why you hear of jailbreaks.

“But if a man goes into prison awaiting trial, and in the next three months, his case is decided he’s either convicted or released to go free. There won’t be a need to worry.

He also recommended adopting Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in settlement of conflicts as a way to reduce the case load for judges to afford them adequate time to focus on serious cases.

“One of the fundamental things we do in this chamber is what we call public interest litigation.

“For It goes to show that we are developing and transparent.

“How do we make society a better place for people to live in? We take different types of cases, either for human rights sake, or corruption just to make sure that the country is on the pedestal of growth, stability and development, we handle that free of charge,”

He said.

Our correspondent reports that in 2020, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, announced the  release of 6, 590 inmates across 32 correctional facilities in 14 states of the federation.

Nigeria’s Correctional Services currently has about 250 prisons of which 155 are prisons for convicts and 83 are satellite facilities and with 74,000 inmates.

WITHIN NIGERIA reports that the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) said as at January 2020, the total population of inmates in the centres was 72,677, with convicted numbering 21,890 and awaiting trial totaling 50,737.