The Federal Government has called on all the state governments, to build holding centres for awaiting trial suspects, to decongest custodial facilities across Nigeria.
Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, stated this at the commissioning of the Osun State Command office complex of the Nigerian Correctional Service, in Osogbo, the Osun state capital.
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In his address titled ” UNMATCHED INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT, Aregbesola stated that the entire National Custodial Facilities have a maximum capacity for 57,278 inmates, but going by the last count there are 68,747 inmates, made up of 67,422 males and 1,325 females, a development he said had overstretched the centres by 18 percent.
He disclosed that 50,992 inmates, representing 74 percent of the total population of inmates in the custodial centres, are awaiting trials while only 17,755 inmates about 26 percent, are actual convicts, a reality of the limitations in the effective management of the criminal justice administration system across the country
In his address of welcome, the Controller General of the Nigeria Correctional Service, Haliru Nababa, who expressed the service’s appreciation to the members of the National Assembly for their commitments at equipping the service for optimal performance, also assured that the NCoS will justify the Federal Government confidence reposed in the Establishment.
Other speakers at the event also called for increased security in all the correctional centres across the country, to prevent the incessant jailbreak.
Edited by Tunde Orebiyi.
