TheCable

The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) says 70 per cent of inmates in prison facilities are awaiting trial.

Haliru Nababa, controller-general of NCoS, said this on Wednesday when he appeared before an investigative hearing organised by the house of representatives joint committees on reformatory institutions, justice, police affairs, interior and human rights.

Nababa, who was represented by Tukur Ahmad, deputy controller general, training and staff development, said there is a need to decongest the prison facilities across the country.

The NCoS boss said prison congestion is due to the challenges in the criminal justice system in Nigeria.

He said the federal government is making an effort to cut costs of feeding the inmates which often runs into billions of naira annually.

“The NCoS maintains 265 custodial centres across the country, with the capacity of 64,192 against a total inmate population of 78,519 as of March 18, 2024,” Nababa said.

“Of this actual inmate population, 70 percent represents persons on awaiting trial.

“For us to speedily decongest our correctional centres in the country, we need the completion of the 3000 capacity new custodial centres that are built across the six geopolitical zones, and we need a lot of money for the service.”

Also speaking, Ahmed Abubakar, commandant general of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), said one of the ways to decongest the prisons is for members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) who are serving as lawyers to help take up pretrial cases of inmates.

“We can see that we have many young men in prisons and we are requesting that these lawyers that are young — NYSC members — be compulsorily sent maybe to help look into cases that are pretrial cases so that we can decongest the prisons,” Abubakar, who was represented by Philip Ayuba, assistant commander-general, said.