Group offers free legal services to 500 Abuja prison inmates

By Eric Ikhilae, Abuja

Five hundred pre-trial detainees at the Kuje Custodial Centre in Abuja benefited from free legal aid services provided by a group – the Network of University Legal Aid Institutions (NULAI) Nigeria – between 2018 and 2019.

NULAI’s Senior Programme Director Mrs. Odinakaonye Lagi said the intervention was part of her group’s effort to aid in the decongestion of the nation’s prisons.

She spoke at an event held in Abuja in honour of lawyers, who offered free legal services in the course of executing the group’s “Reforming Pretrial Detention in Kuje Prison Project.”

She said NULAI Nigeria had collaborated with a consortium of partners and with support from the United States Department of State’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs that launched the project.

Lagi added that the project, a two-year project, which began in 2018, was to support the government in implementing the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), with the aim of achieving a significant reduction in the size of the pre-trial detention population in the Kuje Custodial Centre.

She said: “Reform Kuje is a two-year project that commenced in 2018 to support the institutionalisation and operationaliation of a new Nigerian Correctional Information Management System (NCIMS) and Case Management Module (CMM).

“It is also to provide legal aid services to more than 250 detainees per annum awaiting trial in Kuje prison, and advance effective coordination, sharing of information and documentation to enhance the NCIMS.”

Lagi added that available data as at October 2019 for Kuje Custodial Centre recorded 1,284 inmates enrolled on the NCIMS.

“A case manager tracks an average number of 650 detainees processing through the courts monthly; case manager identified 163 cases with no adjournment dates as far back as December 2017.

“Pre-trial detainee ratio remains at 80 per cent at each snapshot; however, monthly in flow and outflow shows equal ratio,” she said.

Lagi said the project established a Law Clinics’ Partnership for Kuje Prison (LCPK) composed of law clinics from University of Abuja, Nile University and Baze University.

“Through the LCPK, Law students track key indicators and monitor the effectiveness of the Kuje Pre-Trial Detention Case Management System and implementation of the ACJA.

“This is done as law clinics and law students in collaboration with Legal Aid Council of Nigeria and with support from pro-bono lawyers provide legal services to pre-trial detainees at the prison,” she added.

NULAI President Prof. Ernest Ojukwu had noted that the problem with the correction centres was that the facilities had not been made for the number of people, but now made to accommodate more.

“So you have an overflow of people who are locked up that are using facilities made for a smaller percentage of people,” he said.

Ojukwu urged the government to redouble efforts to ensure that correction centres across the country were decongested.

A Senior Managing Legal Officer at Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, said: “In absolute numbers, prisons are not that congested.

“So you have got a capacity of close to about 60, 000 and the number of prisoners is about 62, 000.”