The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinibu’s commitment to reforming Nigeria’s Correctional Service and the upgrade of the living standards of inmates across the country is a resolution that is being actualised to the letter.
Tunji-Ojo said this in Yola, during the handover of the newly constructed vocational centre for female inmates, as well as a renovated vocational centre for male inmates, jointly donated by partners, Legend Golden Care Foundation and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Represented by his Senior Special Adviser, Babatunde Ogundare, the minister disclosed that correctional centres are not grounds where citizens who erred are condemned, but are grounds where lives are remodelled, rehabilitated, and hopes rekindled.
He commended the Legend Golden Care Foundation and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes for jointly providing the vocational centres, among other empowerment equipment for the inmates, as a way of redirecting their lives to be constructive citizens, upon reintegrating back into society.
The Chairman House Committee on Reformatory Institutions, Chinedu Ogah, asks Nigerians to take a lead from the Legend Golden Care Foundation and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, UNODC, who believe that inmates deserve healthy treatment as well.
Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State was represented on the occasion by Brigadier General Abubakar Ibrahim, retired, while the Controller General of Corrections Haliru Nababa, was represented by the Controller of Corrections, Adamawa State, Garba Tsalha.
They both posited that all hands must be on deck, so as to right the wrongs in the affairs of correctional centres nationwide.
While Kanayo Olisa-Metuh is the Executive Director of the Legend Golden Care Foundation, Munchaneta Mundopa, is the Project Coordinator for Prisons and Penal Reforms, (UNODC).
Editor Paul Akhagbemhe
