From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
A Federal Government visitation panel on the nation’s custodial centres has drawn the attention of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), to the deplorable and pathetic conditions of the correctional centres and their inmates.
The visitation panel, headed by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Olawale Fapohunda, revealed that most inmates are languishing in prisons due to a lack of legal representation and the inability of the Legal Aid Council (LAC) to cope with the huge number of cases.
Meanwhile, the panel has called on the AGF to convene a meeting of the Body of Attorneys-General of the 36 states to achieve a coordinated response between the Federal and State Governments on the legal status of all inmates, including, but not limited to, those who have overstayed without trial.
Submitting the report of the panel to the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), Fapohunda said that while auditing the prisons, they interfaced with various categories of inmates and found their conditions unpalatable.
Besides the lack of legal representation, Fapohunda said most inmates are suffering from ailments that the prison authorities cannot bear the cost of treating.
He therefore pleaded with the AGF and the Federal Government to come to the rescue of Nigerian prisons and their inmates to alleviate their poor conditions.
Fapohunda, a former Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Ekiti State, asked the AGF to convene an emergency meeting of the Body of Attorneys-General to debate the deplorable conditions of prisons and inmates and come up with concrete remedies to make life bearable for the inmates.
“It would have been odd in the extreme if the working group had simply focused on the status of Section 35 inmates and ignored the plight of other inmates deserving urgent attention.
“This category of inmates includes those without legal representation. Indeed, several inmates continue to be kept in detention for periods longer than the maximum period of imprisonment prescribed for their offences because they do not have legal representation.
“The working group found that an alarmingly high number of inmates in the custodial centres under review were without legal representation. The AGF is invited to note that, although the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria is mandated to provide free legal services to inmates without representation, it is presently under-resourced and thus barely able to make a significant difference,” he said.
In his remarks, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), disclosed that the working group was constituted as part of efforts to ensure access to justice and prevent persons from being unduly detained in custodial centres.
According to the Minister, the move is in line with the Renewed Hope agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration and aligns with obligations under various national and international instruments, including the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), and other human rights instruments to which Nigeria is a party.
“The mandate of the working group is crucial to achieving the standards we have set for ourselves in our effort to reform our criminal justice system. The vision of Mr. President is for a criminal justice system that maintains law and order, deters crime, punishes offenders, while at the same time strives to rehabilitate those offenders to facilitate their recovery and reintegration into society,” he said.