The Minister of Interior Rauf Aregbesola, has revealed that 75,000 inmates are currently occupying correctional facilities across the country.
The Minister disclosed this on Wednesday at the Public Hearing organised by the National Assembly Joint Committee on 2020 Appropriation Bill.
He added that the government was working to reduce the numbers of inmates across Nigerian prisons.
Aregbesola revealed that in the view of decongesting the correctional facilities, President Buhari has signed a bill into law preventing correctional officers from admitting prisoners awaiting trials.
He said “What are we doing about people who are awaiting trial, the new law provides for correctional officers in the facilities to reject any person that is brought from the court, who is awaiting trial.
“So with this new law, it is clear that going forward we will not have what we have now in our facilities.’’
Aregbesola further said “In no distant future, we will reduce the issue of inmates awaiting trial considerably; as we are also working with the governors on that.
“Because close to 90 per cent of the awaiting trial inmates are violators of state laws and so are essentially the responsibility of the various state governments.
“So we equally need to carry them along in devising strategies to decongest the facilities and I want to assure us all that in six months time, this will be put behind us.”
Discover more from EkoHotBlog
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Advertise or Publish a Story on EkoHot Blog:
Kindly contact us at [email protected]. Breaking stories should be sent to the above email and substantiated with pictorial evidence.
Citizen journalists will receive a token as data incentive.
Call or Whatsapp: 0803 561 7233, 0703 414 5611