Uju Agomoh, the executive Director of one of Nigeria’s best known
credible civil society organizations – Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare
Action (PRAWA) has done a lot of advocacy activities around the issues of the
illegality of prolonged detention of mentally challenged persons in the heavily
dilapidated, derelict and decrepit archaic infrastructure we today call
Nigerian Prisons.
In several speaking events around Nigeria, Uju Agomoh
who is vastly travelled globally, has canvassed an end to the unconstitutional
practice of detaining persons who are mentally challenged in the antiquated
prison facilities in Nigeria that are lacking in medical and/or psychiatric
facilities. Sadly, the political administrators heading the highly incompetent
ministry of interior don't give a damn about what to do to change this evil
status quo.
Many years after Mrs. Agomoh kick-started her campaign to end the
impunity of detention without medicare of persons afflicted with mental
retardation, this tireless human rights advocate, may have finally got the
institutional support of the Federal government because a recently released
2012 prison audit report by the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria
which was publicly validated by the National Assembly of Nigeria and other
leading human rights stakeholders, disclosed that there are many persons that
are mentally challenged who are detained in prisons across the country who
ought not to be there in the first instance.
With the 2012 prison Audit report publicly presented on Thursday
May 16th 2013 in the nation’s capital, it is believed in critical cycle that
the President Good luck Jonathan-led administration would activate
effective mechanism to release these persons with mental illness in Nigerian
prisons to be treated in psychiatric hospitals spread across
Nigeria.
Conversely, it is also expected that since most of these lunatics
in Nigerian prisons were sent to those prison facilities by the justice
ministries and prosecutorial institutions working for the various state
governments whereby this ugly phenomenon is noticed, these state governments
must take immediate action to release and medically rehabilitate these category
of hapless inmates.
The National Assembly and the state Houses of Assembly must also
introduce effective legal frame work to make it almost impossible for lunatics
to ever be sent to prisons rather than sent to psychiatric medical facilities
for attention. As it is, the current bunch of politicians at the state levels
are not in the right frame of mind to effectively carry out this revolutionary
project of ensuring that lunatics are taken to the appropriate psychiatric
facilities for proper treatment and rehabilitation and not locked up in the
prisons to die.
In the year 2012 prison audit report introduced to the public by
the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria, some of the prisons audited
across the country had mentally ill inmates in detention, despite the fact that
these facilities have no qualified psychiatrics or the facility to take care of
their special need.
For instance, in the North East Zone 4 out of 37 prisons had 20
mentally ill inmates in prison. In the North West they were 50, while in the
South South they were 79. Also, in the South West, they were 121, 289 were
found in the South East zone, with Enugu having 136.
Lunatics in Nigerian prisons are as follows; South South
- 79; North East - 20; North Central -
44; South West - 121; North
West - 45; and South East - 363; making a total of
(672) six hundred and seventy two.
There are other sad tales from the prison audit report just issued
which importantly stated that sanitation of those prison facilities have become
so bad and deteriorated thereby exposing many of these prison inmates to
unfathomable health predicaments.
On state of sanitation of Nigerian prisons, the report has it
that; “Though there is every effort by the inmates to keep the cells clean and
tidy, the age of the infrastructure [some of these prisons were built in 1925]
and overcrowding in some cells frustrated the effort. In most of the prisons,
the water cistern toilets were broken and there was no water to flush after use
in some instances".
"In some, they used the bucket system and that created a lot
of stench in the cells. Some of the prisons where the bucket system of toilet
is still in use are Gassol and Serti prisons in Taraba State, and Misua prison
in Bauchi State; Otukpo in Benue State, Pankshin in Plateau State and Ilorin in
Kwara State. In some other instance there exist sewage system, the sewage
systems were either broken or filled up. The prisons also lacked basic
toiletries like soap or disinfectants”, so says the report.
The report which rightly criticized this bad state of sanitation
of these prisons, reminded the Nigerian authority thus; “The UN Standard
Minimum Rules on the Treatment of prisoners and other international, Regional
or National laws have set a benchmark for the treatment of prisoners. In each
of these human rights instruments, it is stated that prisoners are to be
accorded with dignity and human being shall not be treated in a
dehumanizing manner, even when his/her freedom to liberty has be taken away by
the instrument of law".
Writing specifically with reference to what they observed, the
report is of the opinion that; “The standard of facilities in the Nigerian
prisons are appalling, to say the least. Most of the prisons audited lacked
facilities that would aid the wellbeing of the inmates as well as the
reintegration of inmates back in the society after their release from prison”.
The report also observed that most prison facilities in Nigeria
are deficient in vocational; Recreational; health; educational and transport
facilities.
Substantially, the findings of the investigators who visited the
173 prison facilities all across Nigeria, show that Nigeria has failed to
respect international humanitarian and human rights laws in the administration
of these facilities.
According to the report; “The dignity of the human person is an
inherent right. In Furtherance of that, the need to adhere to minimum standard
in protecting the welfare of inmates cannot be overemphasized. Despite the fact
that the inmates are legally deprived of their freedom of movement, their right
to the dignity of the human person cannot and need not be compromised. Section
34 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), provides that “every individual is
entitled to respect for the dignity of his person”. Similarly, the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provide as follows: “all
persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with
respect for the inherent dignity of the human persons”.
The report passed a vote of no confidence on Nigerian prisons
thus; “It was observed during exercise that the wellbeing of the inmates was
far from the minimum standard provided under the laws”.
Nigerians are also aware that of late, a lot of prison wardens
have lost their lives to the violence viciously launched by armed terrorists
who have successfully organized jailbreaks to free their detained members and
the Federal Government has made no concrete effort to build better protected
prisons. This criminal neglect on the part of Government is a grave crime
against humanity. The plan by the National Assembly constitution review
committee to transfer prison from the exclusive legislative list to the
concurrent is not the best way out as most state governments are too poor to
run good prisons.
With the above background in mind, it is therefore inexplicable
that the Federal government rushed into lobbying the National Assembly to amend
the prison Act without introducing bold, positive and revolutionary ideas
that will change the face of the prisons and improve the security and welfare
of the inmates and officials. This government has succeeded in
signing an agreement with Britain that will allow for the prisoners’ exchange
partnership with the government of United Kingdom to make it easier for Britain
to transfer Nigerian-born but United Kingdom-based persons convicted for sundry
crime in the United Kingdom back to Nigeria to serve out their prison terms.
The question to be asked is why rush to accept heavy
indirect financial bribe from the government of Britain just so that Nigeria
can accede to the prisoners exchange programme aimed at decongesting the
British prisons that are built with modern and functional infrastructural facilities
when Nigerian prisons are in very bad shape and overstretched?
Even going by the recent prison audit report, Nigerian prisons are
over-populated even as majority of the inmates are awaiting trial persons.
“Across the prisons the number of Awaiting Trial inmates was far
above that of convicts. In the 173 prisons audited, out of 50,645 lockups, the
number of convicts was 13,901 compared to awaiting trial inmates of 35,889.
Besides the awaiting trial inmates, Ikom prison in Cross River State had 5
lodgers, Ahoada Prison in Rivers State and Benin prison in Edo State, had 2 and
1 lodgers respectively; (lodgers are persons kept in prison without an order of
court detaining them. There are no records of such inmates in the prison records).”
I therefore ask, are these derelict prison facilities in Nigeria
the places whereby these repatriated British based prisoners be transferred
into?
It would be recalled that when this sinister move by government to
sign the controversial prisoners exchange treaty with the United Kingdom was
exposed, most critical stakeholders opposed it and raised suspicion that the
then federal government headed by late Umaru Musa Yar’adua only wanted to rush
the agreement so as to find a way to bring back the incarcerated former Delta
State governor James Ibori [Yar'adua's political friend] who was jailed in
Britain for sundry offences bordering on theft of Delta State fund.
With these sad tales emanating from the Nigerian prisons, it is
therefore inconceivable that any British based Nigerian prisoner could
voluntarily accept to be repatriated to serve term in prisons facilities in
Nigeria that are absolutely sub-human and filthy.
* Emmanuel Onwubiko;
Head; HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA; blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com; www.huriwa.org.
17/5/2013
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