The prison inmates consist of both those awaiting
trial and those convicted of their various offences. However, in most cases, as
we can see later, the awaiting trial inmates in prisons outnumber those already
convicted. We must also note that those awaiting trial are and remain innocent until
they are convicted by a court or tribunal for committing an offence under the
law.
According to Showunmi,
an awaiting trial person (ATP) is someone remanded by an order of a court or
tribunal in prison custody in order to ensure his availability before the
detaining authority in due course for the hearing of his case to prove or
establish his innocence or quality. Awaiting trial persons constitute a
significant percentage of the Nigerian prison population. And many factors are
responsible for it, among which is the police practice of holding charge.
Holding charge is one of the causes of the large
number of awaiting trial inmates in Nigerian prisons and as such a major source
of congestion of prisons. Over congestion of prisons in Nigeria is extremely
acute. Both convicted prisoners and those awaiting trial are all dumped
together in the same cells. The greater proportions of prisoners in Nigerian
prisons are those awaiting trial, those remanded by the orders of courts. Those remanded by the orders of the
courts accounted for about sixty-seven percent of prison population. Due to
mainly administrative reasons such as lack of transportation to take the prisoners
to court, absence of counsel, unwillingness of magistrates to go on with the
case because of lack of jurisdiction, many of these remand prisoner remain in
prison for prolonged period of time without trial.
Consequently, the prisoners are incarcerated indefinitely under harsh and
inhuman conditions even where they have not been found guilty.
The Civil Liberties Organization has described the
condition of Nigerian prisons in the following words:
“Behind the wall of practically every prison in
Nigeria is a slum where men and women too literally live on top of each other.
From prison to prison the housing conditions consistently reveal themselves to
be wretched and in human.”
In line with the above observation, Hon. Justice
Alhassan Idoko of the blessed memory had in 1981 said
They reveal a complete picture of dehumanizing
conditions. Convicts and even those awaiting trial are caged and cramped together
in cells meant for either only one person or fewer persons than are hoarded there.
The sloppings (sic) and stench all around defy solution and the considerable regimentation
throughout the period of the prison sentence has less of a therapeutic value.
The report given by Civil Liberties Organization (CLO)
on the sanitary conditions of the Nigerian prisons is relevant in this context.
The report states:
The state of sanitation and hygiene in the prisons was
quite appalling. Water shortage was acute. Inmates were usually unable to take
their baths for several days and had even less access to water for washing clothes.
Toiletries were a luxury. Bed bugs, cockroaches, rats and mosquitoes bred freely.
Ventilation was poor because most cells either had no window at all or their
windows were sealed in an attempt to prevent prison escapes.
Suffice
to note at this juncture that different actors fuel the holding charge
phenomenon in the criminal justice system in Nigeria notably, the police, the
judiciary and the prisons. The police have the statutory function of effecting
arrest of suspects, initiating prosecution, conducting investigation and
arraigning suspects in appropriate courts of law. Admittedly, the police force
is handicapped by numerous logistic constrains such as inadequacy of trained, dedicated
and well-motivated officers. The inadequacy of office accommodation, stationary,
transport and communication facilities further limits their efficiency.
Transfer of officers handling a case and the lack of transportation facilities to
bring prisoners to court constitute additional constraints. The ministries of
justice are similarly faced with the problems of acute shortage of dedicated,
honest and well-trained state counsel thus necessitating calls for adjournment
of cases. The courts have to grapple with inadequacy of judges and magistrates,
logistic constrains such as few secretarial staff, manual recording of court
proceedings and insufficient library resources for research, corruptive tendencies
and poor conditions of service. However, frequent resort to imprisonment as
sentencing option even for the most minor offences, under-utilization of the
powers of prerogative of mercy and bail are often cited as additional reasons
for delays in conclusion of cases by the courts. The overall implication is to
prolong the stay of detainees in prison awaiting trial.
Prison congestion is partly responsible for the
seemingly insufficient infrastructural amenities in Nigerian prisons. Prison
facilities are stretched to the limits by the unchecked population explosion. Furthermore, congestion in the prisons
results to failure on the part of the authorities to attempt classification of
prisoners as required by local and international rules.
Thus, the former director of the Nigerian Prison Service, Mr. Lily Ojo admitted
that there is a problem when he said:
“The problem of overcrowding has not only imposed strains
on prison management but has rendered the concept of classification meaningless
in our prisons.”
Perhaps, one obvious cause of prison and police cell
congestion is arbitrary arrests and detention on ground of holding charge under
discussion. Recently, it has been shown that out of the total of 45,000 inmates
in the Nigerian prison about 30,000 are awaiting trail which has made the
prisons to be congested.29 For
instance, the Ikoyi prisons was designed to accommodate 400 inmates but as at
today there are about 1,600 inmates in the prison, while some have spent up to
10 years without trial and others have spent 5 to 19 years on trial.30 Also, Abakaliki prisons have been
rated to have the total number of 583 inmates, with awaiting trial persons of
413, which is a 70%31 awaiting
trial inmate. Finally, the writer’s personal visit to Abakaliki prison on 6th
June, 2013, showed that only 47 prisoners were convicted while 694 are awaiting
trial persons, notwithstanding that the maximum capacity of the prison is just 387.
As
regard congestion in police cells, there is no gain saying the fact that police
lack adequate cells to detain suspects. While prisons congestion is an issue
that constantly attracts attention in Nigerian criminal justice discourse, little
or no attention is paid to the congestion of police cells and the ways and
manners in which the police deal with the congestion.
Thus,
Jiti Ogunye32 observed that owing to
poor crime intelligence gathering, police officers usually commence their investigation
after affecting arrests, and this accounts for congestion in police cells. He went
further to state that arrest are not made when investigation is at an advanced stage,
rather, arrests are made at the beginning of investigation by the police and
advised that pre-arrest intelligence can help in limiting the number of days in
which criminal suspects are kept in police custody.
19 Showunmi
L.A.; “Reform of Criminal Justice System
and Congestion of Prisons by Awaiting Trial Persons-
Are there Alternative? Paper presented
at the Summit of Stakeholders on the Administration of Justice in
Lagos on 17th June, 2004.
20 T.O.
Ifaturoti (Mrs.), “Nigerian Prisoners and
the Human Rights Campaigns: Some Challenges”. Nigerian
Current Law
Review 1994, P. 87.
21 Civil Liberties Organisation Annual Report in
Nigeria
1999, at P. 200.
22 Taofik
Adedamola, Op. cit at P. 289.
23 See Behind The Wall, A report on Prison
Conditions in Nigerian and Nigerian Prison System. CLO. 1996
edition p.
13.
24 See Behind
The Wall, Ibid, and Quoted in Ignatius
A. Ayua, “Towards a more Appropriate
Sentencing
Policy in Nigeria” in Nigerian Law Reform
Journal No. 3, January, 1983 P. 22.
25 See CLO’s
Report Human Rights in Retreat, 1993, P. 120.
26 The ATP
influx is at the core of our prison
reform formular, for if we can effectively and sufficiently reduce
and control
their inflow into our prisons, then it would be possible with better management
techniques, for
the
available resources to more efficiently serve the needs of deserving inmates.
See Odinkalu A.C. and
Ehonwa L. Behind the Wall-A Report on Prison Conditions
in Nigeria
and the Nigerian Prison system”
(1991) CLO, Lagos PP. 208-2009.
27 See generally section 8 of the United Nations
Standard Minimum Rule for the Treatment of Prisoners; and
Sections 15,
16 and 17 of the Prisons Regulations, made pursuant to the Nigerian Prisons Act
Cap. P. 29
L.F.N 2004.
28 See Lily
Ojo, “The State of the Nigerian Prisons”
being a paper delivered at the National Seminar on Prison
Reform. June 18-20, 1990, P.7.
29 Ikemefuna
Patrick, “The Administration of Nigerian Criminal Justice and Reform of the
Penal Code”, a
Paper
presented at the Conference on Prison Reform Organized by the Metropolitan
Grand Knights of Saint
Mulumba, Lagos. See Vanguard
Newspaper, May 30, 2013.
P. 5.
30 Ibid.
31 Agomo
Uju, “The Prisons Tomorrow Civil Society
Perspective”. A paper Presented at the Reform of
Criminal
Justice System III, Organized by the Lagos State Ministry of Justice on June 16, 2004.
32 Jiti
Ogunye, Criminal Justice System in Nigeria: The Imperative of Plea
Bargaining”, Lawyers’ League for
Human
Rights, August 2005, P. 29.