Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State was at the Oba Prison in Abeokuta on Democracy Day to share the joy of the day with the inmates and probably grant some of them reprieve, but what he saw shocked him. ERNEST NWOKOLO reports.
All over the world, the concept of prison and imprisoning is not to punish but to correct offenders through an in-built mechanism designed to bring about an effective Reformation, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RRR) of the inmates.
And it is also usually patterned in such a way that by the time the offenders served out their time, either in full or they get pardoned before their term ends, the initial faulty conscience that instigated criminality would have been so reformed to a degree where they would feel sufficiently sorry for the offence committed and also acquire moral strength upon eventual release into the normal society, to say no to the same or similar conducts that sent them to jail in the first place.
And not surprisingly, some inmates do acquire vocational skills at the end of the day, while others intelligent enough and willing, are also given an opportunity to obtain tertiary education, ostensibly to enable them adjust effectively when the prison doors flung opened for them to go home and join their families and members of the larger society.
But the Oba Federal Prison in Abeokuta, Ogun State, presents a different picture.
Tucked in a remote area off Abeokuta and with barely two accessible roads, perhaps only during the dry season, the happenings and plights of the 538 or so inmates in the facility remain largely out of the awareness of others.
This makes help or visitation by family members, non-governmental organisations and other humanitarian agencies to the inmates difficult. Even in an emergency situation, there are no prison vehicles to evacuate those having health challenges.
There are no medical doctors or pharmacists to handle inmates’ ailments, save one nursing officer. No drugs to treat the ailing ones and even the surrounding are not hygienic enough as evidenced in the hot pungent foul odour oozing out from the body of some of the inmates. No fewer than four deaths were said have been recorded there in the last five months, prompting many to express the fear that such incidents might be occurring regularly there.
To mark Nigeria’s Democracy Day, last Thursday (May 29), the state governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun and a team of Committee on Prerogative of Mercy visited the prison.
Amosun was there to see the possibility of granting amnesty to some deserving inmates but he could not believe what he saw. He visited Ibara prison, Abeokuta, earlier same day where he granted amnesty to 15 inmates.
But the governor, who was accompanied to Oba prison by the state’s Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mrs. Abimbola Akeredolu, Health Commissioner, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, Head of Service, Mrs. Modupe Adekunle among others, broke down in tears, saying where the inmates are kept is “shameful”, “appalling” and “dehumani-sing.” He expressed the fear that something “contagious” could be lurching inside Oba prison.
Amosun was particularly saddened by the plights of the over 50 per cent of the inmates who are being ravaged by strange diseases and could not access medication.
He was passionately touched upon listening to the inmates who in their frail and gaunt state, pleaded for clemency lest they die before the conclusion of their cases.
The Nation gathered that some of the inmates had spent up to seven years awaiting trial.
Others have their case files either lost or got muddled up as to be unable to know the charges for which they were being tried.
Amosun said, “for me it was like coming to share the Democracy Day with them, to see the possibility of commuting those on death roll to life imprisonment or release some that have few years to go after considering their record.
“But the condition is dehuma-nising and appalling. If we have any intention of correcting them by sending them to prison, I think this is not the way. It is so bad everybody has to accept responsibility for what has happened.
“Indeed, I put it there (in the visitors’ note) that it is like they are being sent to be killed here. Just look at their condition, Ibara is old but you could see that the inmates are still full of hope. They can be corrected but not the people here.
“I think it is a big shame and I feel so ashamed really that I am a governor in this kind of condition that I have seen, you could see these people, they are traumatised, they are dehumanised, very appalling. I have the feelings that they are being sent to the grave there, just look at their condition.
“They can be corrected but look at the people here, more than 50 per cent of them is either, they are not alive or they are very sick; all of them being ravaged. I think we need to do something. I am not happy seeing fellow Nigerians this way. They may have been criminals at one point in time. I also realise that some of them have been there awaiting trials for upward of 5 – 6 years, some of them sevens years, then there is a problem.
“I am not exonerating myself, governance is a collective thing, those of us in the positions of authority like this, we should be able to take responsibility. It is the Federal Government that is saddled with the responsibility of taking care of the prisoners but we as a state too, we should do something.”
Also, the state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, who observed the state of the prison, told The Nation some of the inmates are likely to be suffering from tuberculosis, festering scabies and sexually transmitted infections.
Soyinka said the state would mobilise its medical team and logistics to attend to urgent health challenges facing the prisoners, blaming their plights on shortage of basic drugs and health officers in the prison’s clinic.
Soyinka said: “there is something we can do. I think one of the problems, is scarcity of resources, they don’t even have drugs and supplies in the clinic that is in there. We are going to assist them with that. Our outreach will be combined with the federal services to assist them.
“There are all sorts of health challenges they are exposed to, malaria, tuberculosis, most likely some have sexually transmitted infections like HIV/AIDs, some have scabies and there are malnourished people there, it is a mixture, there are certain things that are systemic that would take the prison system to correct but there are other things we can assist with and the health insurance would also assist.”
WhenThe Nation met the Comptroller of Prisons, Ogun State Command, Mr. Olalere Joseph, he said they are working to make the prison perform its reformation role on the inmates but complained of the command being handicapped in a number of ways.
“The challenges in Oba prison are peculiar ones. It is not that we don’t have space but we are grossly having shortage of staff. I’m not the one to give directive to employ more staff. It is at the discretion of the National Headquarters to recruit.
“They know we have shortage of staff. We send returns and we have been requesting for more hands. And until recruitment is conducted, there is no way you can get staff.
“On the issue of the medical needs of the inmates, it is not standard enough, we don’t have enough personnel to man the clinic, the Oba prison you are particular about, we have one nurse there, there are supposed to be three staff, but only one person is doing the shift, even if there is no vehicle to take them to hospital.”
On the way the inmates are kept which is predisposing them to many challenges, Joseph said the essence of putting suspects or convicts in prison is to ensure that no escape occurred but where there not enough hands, the inmates have to be housed where few staff can manage.
“The essence of putting them in prison is to ensure that they do not escape for security purposes, we have to manage the space, where we would be able to monitor them closely.
“It is just unfortunate that things are not working the way it is supposed to work, there is provision for this aspect of reformation of inmates but the facility are not standard enough to do this aspect of reformatory programme.
“All the workshops need total rehabilitation. I’m talking of Ogun State command. We need to equip the workshops with necessary tools for all the vocations carpentry, bricklaying, furniture making, weaving, tailoring and a host of others. “
And a sociologist, Dr. Sola Aluko-Arowolo, said the prison is generally supposed to reform inmates, but rued that most of the nation’s prisons may not be able to perform that primary function because of paucity of personnel and lack of even basic infrastructure.
Aluko-Arolwolo, who is a lecturer at the state-owned Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago – Iwoye, said since the prison is a “total institution” which takes absolute control over whoever that is in its custody, the “authority of the prison determines what happened to the inmates.”
He cited the case of Dr. Nelson Mandela, who was able to study and obtained a degree in law while serving jail term in Robin Island, South Africa, because the authority made the prison environment conducive for inmates to achieve whatever noble cause they set their minds upon.
But the don noted that the experience in Nigeria is different, saying it is not uncommon to see 20 people huddled together in a cell meant for two or three inmates.
This, he reckoned, stretched the prison facilities thin, breed unhygienic surrounding, health challenges, psychological problems, aggressive behaviour and peer influence that sabotage the prison’s reformative efforts on inmates.
He admitted that inmates do have some rights, particularly those not convicted for capital offences like murder or robbery, and urged family members and right – based non-government organisa-tions to legally hold the government or its agents accountable for any dehumanising treatment.
He said in the event of ‘wrongful death,’ it is possible to press charges against the government if it can be established that inmate’s death followed negligence or denial of right to basic things that could have saved life by prison authority.
Suggesting some ways out of prison congestion, the university Don said more courts and judges should be made available so that criminal cases can easily be sorted out quickly.
Aluko-Arowolo also said the prison should first be reformed before it can reform inmates and recommended a situation where convicts could be made to serve their terms productively by engaging in farm settlements, roads construction and other ventures to make them useful to themselves and the society.
He equally advised that an extensive use of alternative dispute resolution of cases, where some minor offences could be settled without recourse to the court. According to him, this would reduce the congestion in prisons that followed the prolonged trial of cases of suspects on awaiting trial.
