The criminal justice system of the country prescribes that underage offenders should be remanded in juvenile homes and not in the prison with grown up inmates. But this part of the nation’s law is often disregarded by the various government agencies concerned. Last year, the Lagos State Chief Judge, Justice Olufunmilayo Atilade, decried this unconstitutional practice and went ahead to free a total 209 juvenile offenders detained in various prisons across the state. Few months down the line, scores of underage children have been defiantly hurled back to the prisons. INNOCENT DURU reports after visiting Badagry, Ikoyi and Kirikiri prisons.
Last December, Jeremiah, a 17-year-old indigene of Benue State, looked forward to travelling back home from Lagos to spend the Christmas and New year holidays with his parents and siblings who he had not seen in a long time. As the planned day of departure drew near, Jeremiah began to fantasise about his trip to his state of origin—how his siblings would rush to welcome him, and how his parents, the mother in particular, would plant a kiss on his forehead and shed tears of joy for his safe return.
Unfortunately, his dream did not come to pass. Instead of the anticipated warm welcome by his parents and siblings, he found himself in police custody, from where he was charged to court and subsequently remanded in Ikoyi Prison where he was welcomed by stern-looking inmates. At the time our correspondent visited, Jeremiah said he had spent a couple of months in Cell D7 of the prison with other grown up inmates without any inkling as to when he would regain his freedom.
His offence? He killed his boss’ dog. In an emotion laden voice, Jeremiah relived his ordeal as follows: “I was working as a cleaner for my boss before I was arrested.
My travails began after I asked her to pay my outstanding salaries to enable me to travel home. That request did not go down well with her. Suddenly, she brought up the issue of the dog that had died much earlier. I was arrested on December 22 when I was planning to travel home to celebrate the Yuletide season with my parents.
“I spent some days in police custody before I was charged to court. When I got to court, they said that I was being charged for killing my boss’ dog, asking whether I was guilty or not guilty. The charge was very strange to me. I could not meet the bail condition because I don’t have anybody here in Lagos, so I have been in detention since then.
“Only my brother has come to visit me since I was detained here. I have been crying and living a sorrowful life since I came in. I never imagined that this could happen to me. A minute here is like an hour. An hour is like a whole day. My agony is heightened every day because there is no end in sight to my stay here. I will appreciate if I am taken out of this place. Please, help me.”
Another 17-year-old inmate, Daniel, said he had been cooling his heels in Cell D6 of the same prison for several weeks when our correspondent met him.
Daniel, who claimed to be a bricklayer, recalled that he had fainted five times between the time he was detained in police custody and his time in prison yard because of the unbearable heat in those places. Ikoyi Prison has a capacity for 800 inmates but the number of inmates at the time our correspondent visited was 2,709, three times more than the prison’s capacity.
Narrating his ordeal, Daniel said: “I went to buy food when the police arrested me. I don’t have parents again. I was living with my grandmother before I was arrested. After my arrest, the police took me and others to the anti-cultism section in Gbagada and locked us up there. I fainted four times in the cell because it was too hot for me.
“The police later alleged that we were cultists and charged us to court. I had nobody to stand for me in the court and was subsequently brought to the prison.
“I have fainted once here in the prison because the cell they kept us in before now was like a bakery. The heat was too much, and that made me to faint. My life is in total darkness. I don’t have money to hire a lawyer, so I don’t know when I will be out of this place. I am also worried about my grandmother because I don’t know how she would be feeling right now.”
Our correspondent also had a shocking encounter with Abdulazeez, a 15-year-old inmate of the prison detained in Cell B8. His look easily gave him away as an underage, leaving one to wonder how a boy of his age got into the prison where he hobnobs with grown up inmates, some of whom are hardened criminals.
His lamentation speaks volume on what he had gone through in the prison.
He said: “I come from the northern part of the country. I am out of school and always followed my dad to his place of work. I was arrested on the day a serious fight broke out on our street. I was running away from the scene of the fight when some members of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) apprehended me and handed me over to the police. I was later arraigned in court and detained here.
“This is another world entirely. A lot of bad things that one can never imagine or talk about are happening here. We are always packed like sardines whenever we want to sleep at night. When you lie down, another inmate would lie in opposite direction, placing his legs where you put your head. The next person would put his head around his leg, and it continues like that until everybody is accommodated.
“We are not fed well, so we are constantly battered by hunger. The heat is always unbearable and it is always a miracle to wake up the next day.”
Another 15-year-old inmate, who gave his name simply as Daudu, said he had been in Cell D2 since he was detained in the prison last month.
He said: “I have been detained in the prison since February after a team of policemen raided our area at Lawanson. I wanted to go and buy bread when the incident occurred. The police arrested so many of us on that day and labelled us as case mates. I was later charged to court and fined N50, 000.
“Since I didn’t have the money, I was told to pay N5, 000 with one surety, but I couldn’t meet the bail condition. That is why I have remained in the prison till date. I am not enjoying myself here at all. This is a hell of a place. I have suffered a great deal here and made to experience things that are beyond my age.”
The story of Tunde, a 16-year-old boy, who said he was being detained in Cell B1, is similar to Daudu’s. In a chat with our correspondent, Tunde said: “I am a barbing apprentice. I was arrested at Garuba Musa Street in Lawanson area. I was coming back from work when the police arrested me.
“My parents are late. It is only my brother that is aware that I am here. We hardly bathe here and you know the health implication of that, especially in this overcrowded environment.
“I have learnt to appreciate freedom since I came in here. But my concern is when I would get that freedom again. I am too young to be exposed to the inhuman treatment here in the prison.”
The Nation gathered that more than 500 inmates of the prison were people arrested by the police during random raids.
Jamiu, another 15-year-old inmate, said he was being detained in Cell A4. He said: “I am charged for stealing my boss’ tricycle. I ran away from my home town in Ijebuland. My mother is aware that I am here, but there is no hope about when I would get out of here. I have spent more than one month in the prison. I was taken to court and brought down here to the prison after the court session.”
Ex-Lagos CP, NBA boss, others decry development
A top official of Ikoyi Prison, who did not want his name in print because he is a civil servant, blamed the police for the detention of underage children in the prison. He alleged that the police are in the habit of coercing underage children to inflate their ages so that they could prosecute and dump them in prison.
He said: “We don’t prosecute suspects. Ours is to keep them in custody, and it is people that the police bring here that we detain. When we see underage children, we know them by their looks, but we cannot reject them when the police bring them here. The police often force such children to claim to be older than they are so that the magistrate would not reject them.
“They always give the suspect the impression that it would facilitate their release, but what they are actually doing is to do away with the stress of taking them to correctional homes. Even if we have the power to reject the underage people that are brought to us, the odd hour the police often bring them makes it impossible for us to do so. At times, they bring them around 7pm. If we reject an underage brought to us by that time of the day and something happens to him on the way, what are we going to say?”
His view was corroborated by Mrs Lateefat Salau, the Lagos State Coordinator of Legal Aid Council, a Federal Government organisation which provides free legal service to people.
According to her, “Most arrests in Nigeria are made by the police. When they arrest people and a minor is involved, more often than not, you see them write an adult’s age for the victim so that they will circumvent the law that says a minor should not be kept in the prison. I don’t know what the police stand to gain from doing that.
“Here in Lagos State, there is a family court where cases involving minors can be tried and they could be taken to correctional homes where they can be better treated than the regular prison.”
Asked if the prison authorities can use their initiative to reject underage children brought in to them, she said: “The prison authorities would only look at what is on paper. It is only you and I that can say this person is underage. It behooves the lawyer to the defendant to prove the fact that he is underage by providing his birth certificate.
“When we get that in our office, we search for the parents of the boy, get his birth certificate, approach the court which will give an order that the boy should be taken to children’s home. It is a very long process.
“Some of these boys come to Lagos to look for work, not minding that they are underage. Their parents and relatives are not even here, and some of them are from villages where they don’t register birth and so do not have birth certificates, and we don’t get their parents to give us the certificates we need to prove to the court that they are underage.”
A former Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Alhaji Abubarkar Tsav, said he totally agreed that policemen jerk up the ages of underage people in order to dump them in the prison.
“The police make arrests and prosecute. They can arrest underage people and detain them for only God knows how long, and nobody will say anything. Unless we have a system where anybody going to court has his or her age known and determined by the Nigeria Bar Association, this will not abate,” he said.
Tsav blamed the development on corruption and lack of proper supervision of the police force. He said: “The police are not being properly supervised. Every police formation in the country has legal and human rights departments. It is for them to check things like this, but they don’t, and it all boils down to corruption.
“If they arrest a young man and his parents are rich and they come and give money, the boy will be released. But if your parents are poor and have no money to offer, you will remain there. This is why we are having hardened criminals.
“I want to appeal to the attorney general of the federation, chief justices of the states and the human rights commission to visit the prisons in their locations to see people who should not be in detention. It is a very serious issue. Let us not criminalise our youths in this country.
“Any policeman who for any reason puts an underage person in prison should be sanctioned, because that is the only thing that can deter them.”
The Second Vice President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Barrister Monday Onyekachi, said the blame on police is well placed, adding: “Security agencies are supposed to know where to take any suspect to. At times when they take underage suspects to court, some magistrates do identify them and say that is not where they are supposed to bring them to.
“Magistrates are supposed to be proactive by finding out the ages of suspects brought before them and make appropriate order of the court on where they are supposed to take them to and not for them to be tried in their courts, because magistrates do not have jurisdiction over children.”
Implications of keeping underage children in prison
Examining the implications of keeping underage children in prison, Salau said: “They ought to be taken to correctional centres like the one at Ikeja. The implication is that they will mix with adult inmates who are likely to influence them negatively.”
Her view was shared by Tsav, who said: “If you mix underage inmates with adult ones, they will become hardened criminals. I am even surprised to hear that this is happening in Lagos State where we have very intelligent lawyers. It is not good,” Tsav said.
Also speaking, Barrister Onyekachi noted that under the nation’s criminal justice system, when children commit crimes, they are not supposed to go to the courts. “They are supposed to go to juvenile courts. And if they are found guilty, they are taken to remand homes. Remand homes are really reformatory in the sense of raising the child back to the society.
“They are not supposed to be in the real prisons with criminals because of their age. Most underage inmates are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of any crime. It is a misnomer to have children in prisons where you have hardened criminals, more so when they have not been tried.
“It is dangerous to have underage children in prisons because their sense of understanding and formative stage is being distorted. Introducing them to hardened criminals in the prison at that age may affect their reasoning and it is capable of deepening them into criminality.”
We care about underage, vulnerable people —Police
The Lagos State Police Command, however, denied allegations that it is responsible for detaining underage children in prisons. In a telephone conversation with our correspondent, the spokesperson of the Lagos State Police Command, Chike Oti, said: “We have a gender section that handles cases involving children, domestic violence and sexual offences, and they are very professional about handling issues affecting children, women and other vulnerable persons.
“We work in partnership with the Lagos State Welfare Department under the Ministry of Youths and Social Development, and even with UNICEF which comes to see what we do. My boss, CP Hedgal Imohinmi, is a man that is very passionate about issues relating to children, women and other vulnerable persons.
“It is known to all that he does not joke with such issues. Such a man would not allow any of the units under him to take children into prisons instead of correction centres.”
