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From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
Relief has come the way of over 60,000 awaiting trial inmates in Nigeria as the United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), in conjunction with Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC), has deployed equipment worth millions of dollars to five Nigerian universities to offer pro-bono services to prison inmates.
The benefiting schools include Veritas, Philomath, Baze, Nile and University of Abuja. Speaking to newsmen after inspecting the newly-deployed equipment, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PPDC, Lucy James Obagi, said that the aim is to strengthen the paralegal capacity of law clinics while ensuring they are better equipped to serve pre-trial detainees and provide high-quality paralegal services.
Among the items delivered, she said, are smart boards, conference tables and chairs, bookshelves, filing cabinets, public address systems, computers, printers, digital cameras, and inverters.
“It’s important we understand the role of clinicians in law students to understand the ethics of pre-legal students to prison inmates. Looking at the number of awaiting trial inmates, which is above 60,000, you can see that we need more of our legal services to fast track the release of people on awaiting trial.
“So, we hope that we can use this methodology to train more clinicians to interface with people awaiting trials in prisons and provide pro-bono services to them.
“We want to ensure that in the next few years, at least the number of people in prisons would have dropped to at least 30 per cent.
“We want to say thank you to INL for supporting the project, for supporting us and working with us for two years plus. They keep supporting us hoping that the justice system in Nigeria is restored,” she said.
Receiving the items, Dean, Faculty of law, UniAbuja, Professor Uwakwe Abugu rated the law students of UniAbuja high in terms of offering pro-bono services.
