Nigerian Lives Matter Even in Prison

One Nigeria Group applauds the Lagos State government for taking the initiative to decongest prisons in the State through her mobile courts initiative. We encourage the State government to continue to ensure that persons arrested for minor social offences are not allowed to pass through despicably de-humanizing detention while awaiting trial.

One Nigeria Group applauds the Lagos State government for taking the initiative to decongest prisons in the State through her mobile courts initiative. We encourage the State government to continue to ensure that persons arrested for minor social offences are not allowed to pass through despicably de-humanizing detention while awaiting trial.

It is disgraceful and regrettable enough to be apprehended and made to serve various sentences as punishment for the violation of different environmental and traffic regulations which includes community service.

The government should be expedient in its delivery of judgement to prevent these minor offenders from languishing in detention under such deplorable prison conditions in violable of their rights to receive fair judgement within constitutionally prescribed periods of time in detention.

It is in that premise that we welcome the statement of Mr. Aside, Kazeem, the Directorate of Public Prosecution in Lagos State at the weekend when he disclosed that of the 5,000 inmates in different prisons in the state, no fewer than 4,000 were still awaiting trial, representing 80 per cent, and of that number, the state successfully prosecuted 1,107 persons, who violated different environmental and traffic regulations in the state through its newly initiated mobile courts.

The introduced community service by the state government to address prison congestion had led to the sentence of 2,073 offenders “to various terms of community service across the state’s 12 Magisterial Districts between May 2015 and March 2016.” These offenders actively assisted in improving their respective communities instead of being incarcerated in prisons with the consequential disruption to their economic, social and family lives.

Mr. Kazeem also said that “with regards to criminal prosecutions, the DPP is committed to ensuring that all offenders are brought to book, thereby discouraging impunity in our society. The Directorate is also committed to speedy trails so that suspects are not detained for too long awaiting trial.

The group encourages all States Directorate of Public Prosecution and that of the Federal government to embrace this laudable initiative to immediately de-congest our prisons across the country. If Nigerians who commit crimes in foreign countries are given better treatment, why must we met them even worse treatments.

#NigeriaLivesMatter!