It was only my journalistic instinct that led me to some prison officials to find out if indeed all the condemned convicts, about 16 of them, at Gombe Central Prison were recently moved to Jos prison to await their date with the hangman. Jos is the only prison in Northern Nigeria that has execution gallows apart from Kaduna’s. This is because in 1995, I successfully fought through the media for the release of 17 condemned convicts at Kaduna prison when then Col. Jafaru Isa was the governor of the state.
However, beyond the affirmation of the condemned convicts’ transfer rumour, I came across a rather frightening developing story across the Nigerian prisons. It has to do with feeding the prisoners. This is quite germaine because there is nothing thornier in prison administration than tempering with the prisoners’ feeding regime. Keeping a prisoner hungry, or denying him feeding at all when he or she has no any means of securing food because of his incarceration is by all standards even inhumane.
In fact, all religions are unanimous that imprisoning even if it is an animal, talk less of human being, and starving it or him especially to death and without giving such being the chance to fend for it/himself, is a great sin that can lead to hell-fire. Secondly, a hungry man is no doubt an angry man; and such starvation could lead to prison riot and potential jail-breaks that can be hazardous to the society. Similarly, starvation, advertently or inadvertently used as a tool, could give the country a bad image in the eyes of the international community, especially those protecting human rights. The present indictment of Syrian authorities in this regard in its on-going civil war is enough evidence.
To put the problem in context, government until 2015 was feeding each prisoner per day at N200. However, due to economic realities; and consistent with human rights consideration, the previous administration reviewed the feeding allocation to N300 and N150 per prisoner per day for food ration and gas respectively which was to take effect from January 2015. However this review, though had a presidential approval, was left only on paper till date. In fact checks from the Prison Service Authorities indicate that even the N200 old feeding rate and gas old rate payment per prisoner per day was stopped since August 2015, with most food suppliers unable to be paid even the old rates from September 2015.
President Muhammadu Buhari is well known for prison reforms and fairness to inmates who are supposed to be undergoing reformative measures and not just punishment, since many of them are even awaiting trial and not convicts. This is why in 1984 he as the then Head of State enforced a policy of using cooking gas in Nigerian prisons to substitute use of firewood. His reasons then were to aid fighting desertification; put Nigeria’s gas wasted in flaring to better and more beneficial use; and reduce security risks in prisons since during jail riots, firewood becomes easy weapon in the hands of irate prisoners.
When therefore towards the end of 2015, the President submitted request of supplementary budget to the National Assembly for oil subsidy settlement and security expenditure, he included about N2billion for the prisons to off-set their liabilities, because feeding prisoners has always been regarded as a special security issue, since if they starve, they will riot; if they riot, there will be jailbreaks; and if dangerous inmates are needlessly let loose in the society, there will be an upsurge in criminality at the expense of the Nigerian nation.
Feelers at the Ministry of Interior have indicated that from the N2billion assented to in the supplementary budget, prison food suppliers will be settled of the old rates of N200 till December 2015; while the surplus from the same N2billion will also cover arrears of the additional rate per prisoner that will settle the 2015 backlog of last year. Till date, however, nobody knows what is happening to that N2billion. Neither the Interior Ministry nor even the Nigerian Prison Service Headquarters could give any informed position of the approved supplementary budget. Already, word is going round that some prisoners’ food rations are getting from bad to worse because the capacity of most suppliers to meet up to the feeding requirement is degraded due to prolonged lack of payment. With the general economic challenges nationwide, one could imagine what will happen if prisoners could not get food when suppliers are no longer able to feed them due to lack of finance. In Port-Harcourt Central Prison alone, there are estimated 3000 inmates. In Kano City also, there are 3 prisons with the Central Prison alone housing between 1200 –1400 inmates. In other major prisons like at Kiri-kiri in Lagos and Benin in Edo and Kaduna in Kaduna State, none has less than a thousand inmates. And apart from the main prisons across the country, there are also many more numerous other satellite prisons scattered nationwide, which all must be fed, and with the potential of riots if push comes to shove when hunger is allowed to reign.
Non-utilisation of this N2billion bailout has also stalled this most important programme of gas cookers and kitchen reform, which the federal government approved N150 per prisoner per day as part of the cooking gas contract to migrate to the cooking gas regime from firewood.
What then are the implications of all these? Firstly, why is this presidential policy directive, as important as it is, flouted, and by who, perhaps with impurity? What happened to the N2billion supplementary budget for the prisons? Are President Buhari and Interior Minister Abdulrahaman Dambazau, all of them Generals, aware that the prison inmates are at the verge of costly starvation for alleged non-tracing, or at least non usage of the N2billion bailout largely meant for their feeding?
It will be recalled that during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure when late Ibrahim Jarma was the Controller-General of the prisons, similar approval was made to the service, but an official of the then Internal Affairs Ministry was accused of lodging the amount in a call account in a commercial bank and allegedly collecting his fat commission upfront, thus leaving prisoners starving. It was only by providence the presidency at that time got to know of the shady deal and directed for its immediate release.
And with all the security challenges now at hand like Boko Haram insurgency, kidnappings, violent ethnic struggle for breakaway from the Nigerian nation, re-emerging oil pipeline vandalism etc; is Nigeria ready for another potential security threat of prisoners’ uprising nationwide? If President Buhari achieved cooking gas revolution in the prison administration as far back as 1984, over thirty years ago, should needless bureaucracy and avoidable administrative red-tapism be allowed to now stall this very expedient environmental best practice? The President and the Minister of Interior ought to know this.
– Akko sent in this piece from Gombe
(Leadership News)
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