Tag: United Nations General Assembly

• Tale of infants languishing in prison with their mothers

Nigeria in 2003 domesticated the United Nations General Assembly resolution 44/25 Convention on the Rights of the Child which came into effect on September 2, 1990. But 15 years after the country domesticated the convention that is globally accepted as the most widely ratified human rights convention, there has been little or no respite for the malleable ones in the society. In 2013, the United States country human rights reported that Nigeria’s notorious jails and detention centres hold an estimated 6,000 children and minors, many of whom were born there and serving terms with their parents despite government’s order to effect their release. Nothing appears to have changed since the report was made public.

‘…it is a happy day and things are gonna get better’.  So reads the third line of the second stanza of the Kirikiri Female Prison anthem. But for most of the inmates, especially the pregnant and nursing mothers, things aren’t looking any better.  All they see is total darkness and hopelessness. Their frustration is further compounded by the fate of their innocent babies and the stigmatization that could be their lot when they eventually regain their freedom from the overcrowded prison.

The prison has capacity for 211 inmates but as at the time of the visit, the inmates were over 300 with 69 already convicted and 232 awaiting trial.

Some of the embattled inmates sorrowfully clutched their babies to their chests as they dejectedly walked around the prison premises, while the infants of walking ages innocently gamboled around without being unaware of the fate that awaits them.

“I have been here for weeks because I couldn’t perfect my bail. I was given a bail of N20, 000 but there was nobody to pay it. I am more worried about my child.  Tears drop from my eyes uncontrollably each time I think of my child being in the prison with me.  It is sad,” one of the inmates told The Nation.

Another inmate said: “I gave birth to my baby here in the prison. I am in the Olomo Cell with other nursing mothers.  I was pregnant when I was brought here and ended up putting to bed here. It doesn’t feel good to give birth and bring up a baby in the prison. The thought haunts me but I have taken solace in God.”

One of the inmates who said she was in prison for charges bordering on kidnapping, said: “I came with my baby to the prison. It is not a good experience for adults not to talk about children.”

Even though, children above 18 months of age are not permitted to be in prison custody, checks revealed that this law is often infringed upon.

The Nation’s observation was corroborated by the Executive Director of Prison Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) Benson Ngozi Iwuagwu.

According to him, “The maximum age that babies should stay with their mothers in the prison is 18 months. That is what the law says but you still discover that there are some above that age there and the reason is simple. You can’t throw the child outside the prison. There must be a responsible person that the child would be handed over to but where those are not available, the child remains in the prison until they find some solutions.

“The child is as good as a prisoner because that is where he was born. The birth certificate would indicate that?”

The National Public Relations Officer of the Nigerian Prison Service, (NPS) Francis Enobore, admitted this in a chat with our correspondent.  “Having children who are above 18 months in the prison is another big challenge to us. We are only empowered to allow a child that is below the age of 18 months to stay with the mother for them to bond properly before the child is finally weaned. Sometimes, some of these ladies that are found on the other side of the law, come from backgrounds that are not too rosy.

“Some of them don’t have families or know the person that impregnated them and so have nobody to take over the parenting role for the child.  What we do is to go to the state welfare office and make complaints so that formally, there could be a body that can take over the care and support of the child.

“Sometimes we face some challenges in terms of weaning these children to the state welfare and where there is no credible adult who is a family member of these ladies coming forward to receive the child, it becomes a very big problem because we cannot throw the  child into the street.  These are some of the challenges we are always confronted with but somehow, we talk to religious bodies, NGOs and credible people who would come and formally provide foster parentage for such children.”

Speaking on the detention of underage in prison, Enobore said: “I would not agree that the police are responsible for detaining underage persons in prisons.  Police only arrest and take suspects to court. If the magistrate sees the accused and does not see the accused to be underage before sending him to the prison, then we should not blame the police. The magistrates should be able to use their discretion to say the underage accused should be sent to a juvenile facility.

“Instead of saying the police, we should group all the security agencies together because all of them make arrest. We should work in harmony with those who have the power to arrest and those who have the power to sentence to prison in order to address the issue of detaining underage persons in prisons. Another thing we can do is to encourage state governments to assist the Federal Government to establish more centres where juvenile offenders are kept.”

Implications of detaining infants in prisons with mothers

The implications of detaining infants in prison with their mothers,  according to Iwuagwu, is too enormous. “First of all, it is damaging to the child. It makes the child a scapegoat for the mother’s offence. It is largely damaging to the psychology and proper upbringing of that child.  It is very very injurious and damaging not just to the child but also our future because if you have such children come out into the society, they are normally most of the time mal-adjusted, so you are like breeding problems for tomorrow.”

He advocated for the adoption of the Uganda model in Nigeria. “In Uganda, in front of the female prison, they have a full crèche where children born in prison are immediately transferred. But we don’t have that here. You see attempts at doing that but it has not succeeded.  There in Uganda,  babies don’t live with their mothers in the prison. The mother goes out there to breastfeed the baby. We should punish the guilty and not the innocent with the guilty.”

Also speaking, a professor of Sociology and General Studies at the Obafemi Awolowo Univeristy, Ile Ife, Osun State, Professor  Bisi Aina, said:  “I am not sure we have a prison that is cognizant that a mother is bringing a baby and therefore has facilities for them. So, detaining a child with the mother has telling effects on the health of the child and the psyche. We are not sure the feeding and the water would be proper.  For the child to grow up to feel that the first two to three years of his life he was in prison, would make prison not to be a deterrent to such a child anymore.  Where the child grows up to behave well, it takes self-esteem away from him.  Imagine a child growing up and part of her life story is that she spent the first five years in prison, it does not speak well.

“This is one of the lapses in our laws  and governance. When you put a woman who does not have anybody to take the child off her in prison, the state should be responsible for the care of that baby. The state should put structures on the ground to take care of the baby and when the mother is out, she can go for the child. You cannot because of breast milk put a child in a condition that would be detrimental to his life. In this case we can do bottle feeding and that should be outside the prison.  I don’t think any child should have prison experience. “

She added: “This issue is beyond establishing  what happens to the child because we all know what will happen to him.  That child can never have a proper care-from health, physical, emotion to spiritual. We should be talking about the gap in policy, the law, and the way we implement the rights law. The child belongs to the state.  The country should get the citizens to be more committed to the state than the families.  If you get to America, it is America first because the country plays much role in the life of the citizens than the family.    Here we see prison as punitive and not reformative. The sin of the mother should not be visited on the mother. The child is a separate human being with his/her own rights separate from that of the mother. I don’t think that a child who has not committed any offence should be in prison.”

To address this challenge, Enobore said: “There are plans presently by the controller general of prisons to establish crèche where we have female prisoners. In Kirikiri Prison, there is a crèche that is 100 times better than what you have outside.  The CG is saying that apart from Lagos and one or two other states with such facility, we need to establish and furnish crèche in all the places we have females detained.”

 Other human rights issues in prison

Aside from cases of infants detained in prison with their mothers, findings showed that there are myriads of cases of exploitation and  other human rights abuses going on in the prisons.

An inmate of Cell C in Badagry Prison who gave his name as Joseph relived how he has been allegedly exploited by his lawyer.

His words: “When I was first charged to court, I paid him N135,000 for my bail because he said he would pay the two sureties N40,000 each. On the day of another hearing, I discovered that he had withdrawn one of my sureties. He thereafter asked me to pay him for another surety. I gave him the N7,000 on me and had my parents send additional N30,000 to his bank account. But the surety was revoked.

“After that, he did some pranks with the surety matter and asked me to bring additional N200,000. I got angry at this point because if I should pay that money, all the payments to him would have been enough to settle the complainant. My people have arranged another lawyer  who is willing to get paid after sorting out my case.  My mother has breast cancer and cannot travel down here. I am sad that she has to be made to suffer all these. “

One of the warders at Kirikiri Prison  also narrated how a lawyer allegedly fleeced an inmate’s family of the sum of N800,000 without doing anything about the case.

“When I heard about the matter, I called the lawyer and threatened to deal with him if he failed to refund the money. Initially, he tried to intimidate me but when he saw my level of seriousness, he refunded the money. All these happen because people get desperate to have their loved ones detained in prison to be released.”

Cases of mentally unstable inmates in prison

Even though mentally unstable persons are not supposed   to be kept in prison custody, The Nation investigation showed that a number of them are in behind bars.  Two  of such people were noticed  at the female section of the Kirikiri Prison. One of them is fair in complexion and  the other dark. While the one that is fair in complexion managed to give an uncoordinated account of what led to her detention in the prison, the other could not make any sensible statement.

“I was at the bus stop when I saw people running. I saw people holding cutlasses. Some people came and took me and used cloth to cover my eyes and brought me here. That is all I can remember, ”the fair-complexioned inmate said.

Aside from the inmates suspected to be having mental health challenges, a number of the inmates are also afflicted by myriads of health issues. At the Kirikiri Medium Prison, The Nation learnt  that over 20 inmates of the prison populated by men are suffering from hernia. One of the victims, it was learnt, has died as a result of complications resulting from the challenge with the fate of others still hanging. A warder at Ikoyi Prison informed The Nation that inmates who are mentally unstable in their custody are people with serious cases like murder.

Bemoaning the detention of mentally unstable people in prison, Mrs Lateefat  Salau, the Lagos Coordinator of Legal Aid Council, said: “People with mental health issues are there in the prisons but the position is that they ought to be taken to psychiatric hospitals. The problem is that here in Lagos State, we don’t have psychiatric hospitals that are willing to admit them. This is why when they are arrested, they would just be dumped in prison.

“The courts do give orders that they should be taken to psychiatric hospitals but more often than not financial ability to do this is not there in the prison and the hospitals are not always willing to admit them without the financial support from their families.”

She, however, said: “Such inmates don’t remain in the prison forever. The court has a way of going round it. After waiting for a long time and if witnesses are not forthcoming, the court will have no alternative than to release them.  The implication is that these mentally challenged people will now be unleashed on the society.”

Reacting, the NPS spokesman, Enobore, said: “It is only a psychiatrist that has the power to declare somebody to be mentally unstable. The fact that your freedom is going to be taken away would subject some people to psychological shock. We have psychologists in NPS; with time, some of these people are exposed to some psychological re-orientation to help them adjust to the environment they find themselves. But when the situation becomes so obvious, we refer such cases to the psychiatric hospital nearest to the prison where the inmate was originally sent.”

Inmates without legal representation

One challenge that is common to all the prisons is the problem of lack of legal representation for a good number of the inmates.

All the prisons, Ikoyi, Badagry and Kirikiri are filled with inmates that have no lawyers to represent them. The Nation learnt that the situation would have worsened if groups like Legal Aid Council, Prison Fellowship of Nigeria, PRAWA and   the Directorate of Citizens’ Rights under the Lagos State Ministry of Justice have not been providing pro bono legal services to the affected inmates.

The Director of the Directorate of Citizens’ Rights, Mrs Omololu Idowu Adesina, said: “When the police arrest people and they are detained by the order of court, their parents or guardians may not know.  When this kind of situation arises, it is now the duty of agencies of government to intervene. That is why the Office of the Public Defender (OPD) has been established to defend the defenceless or people that have no money to defend themselves.  Our office is to defend indigent citizens, people who have no money because to employ the services of a lawyer doesn’t come cheap. That is why we do it free of charge.

“Many inmates will rot in the prison if the state government is not rendering the service through the directorate because there would be nobody to defend them.”