From Gyang Bere, Jos
A group under the umbrella of Headfort Foundation, has said it will continue to provide free and easy access to justice for indigent Nigerians who are victims of Police brutality and wrongly incarcerated persons.
The Foundation said it has provided free and access to justice for 291 Nigerians who were wrongly incarcerated across different Correctional Centres in the country.
Communications Manager, Headfort Foundation, Itunuoluwa Awolu disclosed this on Sunday while appreciating a Jos based Philanthropist, Yusuf Yahaya-Kwande and other Nigerians over their generous donations towards achieving their mandate of ensuring free and easy access to Justice to wrongly incarcerated and victims of police brutality in Nigeria.
“We provide free and easy access to justice for indigent inmates across Correctional Centres and victims of Police brutality. We have being rendering this free service for over three years of existence and 291 persons have accessed justice.
“We solicits funds from individuals, organizations, philanthropists and we also solicit for grants but our major sources of funding has been donations from individuals who read our stories from our website and social media platforms.
“We are grateful to Yusuf Yahaya-Kwande, a philanthropist who read our story online and decided to reach out to us. His gesture is incredible because he called and supported us.
“He has made donations to us at different times and his donations has been helpful to us. Last month when we had issues with payment of salary, we reached out to him and he still donated to us, he has being generous.”
Itunuoluwa called on Nigerians to support the foundation in saving lives and providing easy access to justice for innocent Nigerians who are arrested and jailed wrongly.
“I call on Nigerians to support our work because getting people out of incarceration has not been easy and reintegrating them into the society is another task that requires funding.
“About 95% of these victims are innocent, they were just picked up randomly and some were wrongly accused. Some have spent 2 years in custody and because they are poor, they couldn’t pay their bills and some of them want to go back to their businesses and their homes have been taken over because they were living in rented apartments.”
She explained that most of the victims after securing Justice and freedom required medical checkup as some of them are battling with life threatening diseases and traumatic condition.
“I therefore, appeal to Nigerians to support our work because it has not been easy and no matter how little the donation is, it will help these people to start life.”
Founder of Yahaya-Kwande Foundation and a Philanthropist, Yusuf Yahaya-Kwande, a supporter of The Headfort Foundation said “The Headfort Foundation Team led by Oluyemi Adetiba-Orija is an amazing group of selfless Nigerian lawyers who are doing a great job, working pro bono to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone.
“This was a very easy project for me to support and will continue to do so. I have never met them but decided to reach out to Headfort Foundation and offer my support after I stumbled upon their work on social media. Donors make small dreams turn into big realities. Let’s support these self-sacrificing lawyers who save lives”.