COVID-19: Decongest Correctional Centres or Face Legal Action – NGOs Warn Bauchi Govt.
BY ADEYEMI AKANJI, BAUCHI – As part of the measures aimed at checking the spread of COVID-19 among inmates of Correctional Centres, two Non-Governmental Organisations on the aegis of Lawyers Alert and Prison Inmate Development Initiative (PIDI-NIGERIA), have issued the Bauchi State Government a 5-day ultimatum to immediately take urgent steps to implement the directive by the Federal Government on the need to decongest Correctional Centers across the country.
The NGOs declared that the implementation of the Federal government’s directive on prison decongestion is not negotiable.
In a letter addressed to the Bauchi State Attorney -General and Commissioner of Justice signed by the Executive Director of PIDI-Nigeria, Mbami Sabka,
the Organisations also stressed the need for the implementation of the directive in order to save lives of the inmates.
The letter with title; “Re-Federal Government Directive on Decongestion of Correctional Facilities, Need for Activation,’ the two organizations warned that they may be compelled to approach the courts to make the State Government to carry out the noble directive in the event of failure to activate the process within 5 days from the receipt of the letter.
The NGOs further said; “Without doubt, we are all aware of COVID-19 Pandemic, the consequences and the science of its infection which without doubt makes the Correctional Service Centres (prisons) a place of high risk infection.
“With over 72,000 inmates in congested and largely unhygienic places, infections can be an inferno within this context if interventions are not quickly carried out.”
The group also said that the intervention should include decongesting the Correctional Service Centres of inmates awaiting trial and other groups of inmates, adding that, that was what informed the recent approval by President Muhammadu Buhari on the urgent need to decongest Nigeria’s Correctional Service Centres.
The letter further states; “The president equally directed that urgent steps be taken to decongest the facilities to prevent fatalities arising from any likely outbreak of the virus.”
The two groups further explained that the Presidential Committee on the decongestion of Correctional Facilities subsequently met on the steps to actualize the directive of the President which includes that the Federal Ministry of Justice, the Correctional Service Formations, State Governors, Attorney-Generals of States intensify actions to reduce inmates amid the health challenges associated with COViD-19.
The groups also said that State Governors, Chief Judges and State Attorneys-General are expected to consider the use of their powers of prerogatives of mercy in speeding of decongestion and to visit correctional service formations for the purpose of the decongestion.
The groups further state; “The state governments be encouraged to consider payment of fines in respect of minor offences for those categories of inmates that could not afford paying same in respect of offences that attracts fines arising from the convictions.
Other classes of prisoners include those in Correctional Service Centres for a period above ten years and inmates for a longer period without any documentation and those on holding charges on magistrate orders among others.
The groups then expressed confidence that within 5 working days from the date of the service of the letter, it will be possible for the office of Bauchi State Attorney-General to facilitate the release of inmates that are qualified for the gesture by carrying out an enumeration of all of them in accordance with the accompanying guidelines and file same in court for appropriate releasing orders.
