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By Chukwudi Nweje
Prison Fellowship Nigeria (PFN), in partnership with Prison Fellowship International (PFI) and the Nigerian Correctional Services (NCS), recently organised a workshop for officers of Zone A of the NCS consisting of Lagos and Ogun states to train and equip officers with skills needed to ensure that inmates of correctional centres are reformed for reintegration into society on completion of their terms.
The workshop, with the theme “Remedial Programmes Symbiotic Reinforcement,” explained to the officers their role in actualising Section 10 of the Nigerian Correctional Services Act 2019, which in subsection (g) outlined the functions of the Nigerian Correctional Services to include: “initiating behavioural modification in inmates through the provision of medical, psychological, spiritual and counselling services for all offenders including violent extremists.”
The aims of the workshop include acquainting correctional officers with empowerment, remedial and behaviour modification programmes of PFN; to secure a better understanding of the mutuality and symbiotic relationship of PFN programmes.
Dr. Uju Agomoh, executive director, Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), a resource person at the workshop, in her lead discussion, explained why society must be interested in the welfare and rehabilitation of inmates.
According to her, society has to be interested in the rehabilitation and reinterpretation process of ex-inmates because every offender is a member of society and will rejoin the same society upon release.
She said: “Every offender, unless he dies in custody, is going to come out someday. So, we must be interested in what to do to reduce the chance that the offender will come out and commit the offence again. Even after he leaves custody and is now an ex-offender, we need to follow up. That is where we miss it, society will stigmatise the person both while he is in custody and when he is released and, we, as a society, will be worse for it.”
She noted that the Nigerian criminal justice system is missing a major aspect of most times not giving adequate attention to victims of crime.
She added: “Every time a crime is committed, there are three major dimensions and if you miss any of them there will always be problems. The first is what you do with the offender, the second is what you do with the victim and the third is what you do with the community. “Oftentimes, we concentrate too much on the offender, but then there is the victim. I’ve not seen a society as insensitive as we are. This was not what our traditional justice system was like. Our traditional justice system recognised the victims’ place, the community’s place and the offender. We now have a borrowed system that believes it is the offender versus the state that sometimes nobody even talks about the victim. I think this is wrong.
“It is good for us to have a comprehensive approach to addressing the processing of persons affected by crime, whether it is the victim, the offender or the community, that will be the spirit of what Justice Chukwudifu Oputa said while he was alive. We must stand on that tripod: the offender, the victim and the community.”
Mr Uche Nwobi, Assistant Controller Genera Zone A, NCS consisting of Lagos and Ogun states, who represented Mr Haliru Nababa, Controller General of NCS, said the workshop captures the essence of the name change of the prison services to correctional services.
“Everything we do gears towards correction of misbehaviour. The workshop is geared towards training our officers to be better prepared for their job and to expand their knowledge on how to do their job in the yard. Our mandate is to reform the inmates and prepare them for life after their stay in custody,” he said.
In his contribution, Mr Benson Iwuagwu, Executive Director, PFN, said the workshop was driven by a sense of responsibility to Nigeria and society.
He said: “Even before the era of banditry and other crimes in Nigeria, there was a need for a correctional system to be much more responsive than it was because the common characteristic before now is the high rate of recidivism and that is a common denominator of a society that is failing or is not effective. That made us, in partnership with PFI, to come up with programmes that are remedial of inmates’ behaviour because crime or criminality have causative factors and if these are not objectively and intentionally addressed it becomes a catch-22 situation. We also want to get the correctional services to explore and exploit opportunities that abound in civil society organisations and faith-based organisations. In our own case, we offer specifically targeted programmes that address some of those behavioural attitudes that predispose to crime and criminality.”
