By Sumaila Ogbaje
Abuja – The Vice President, Prof Yemi Osibanjo, has said that the Federal Government will ensure a reformative process in Nigerian prisons and for the inmates.
Osibanjo made the pledge on Tuesday in Abuja at the National Prison Ministry Conference and Investiture of Patrons of Prison Fellowship in Nigeria.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the theme of the conference is “Rebuilding Lives and Repairing the Harms of Crime’’.
The Vice President, who was represented by Pastor Joseph Malomo, Chaplain of the State House Chapel, commended the fellowship for complementing the efforts of government in rehabilitating prisoners in the country.
He enjoined the fellowship to collaborate with other NGOs and faith-based organisations to ensure that the gospel was preached to prisoners.
“The purpose of the fellowship is to preach Christ but it can be challenging where it is difficult to have such messages preached; but the effort of reforming prisoners is interfaith-based.
“It has to cut across interfaith because criminals are in all the religions and reformation must be the effort of everybody because, creating a new society is an effort that we must all embark upon.
“The fellowship should see how it can collaborate with other NGOs and faith-based organisations, especially in the North-East, because there are many that have been arrested because of the insurgency.
“We must see how we can reform them and I believe that by the grace of God it will be possible,’’ he said.
Rev. Tor Ujah, the Executive Secretary, Nigerian Christians Pilgrims Commission (NCPC), who was the Chairman of the conference, called for total reformation of the country’s prison system.
Uja also called for the restructuring of the criminal justice system and development of the country’s educational system, adding that lack of education was one of the major reasons for crime.
According to him, most people who have gained some reasonable level of education do not easily throw themselves into crime while the absence of educational opportunity creates that situation.
“I will not talk about poverty because poverty is relative but education is a more central thing.
“I will like two things to happen: one is that judges should be more proactive and remove people who have stayed lightly longer than they are to stay when they have been tried.
“For anybody to stay in prison for two years without trial, anybody in that category should be discharged and set free.
“More importantly, I still want us to “decolonise” Nigerian prison because it is a draconian colonial system that has not been helpful to Nigeria,’’ he said.
Uja said that the Nigerian prison system had neither the process of making the prisoners productive nor the process of creating opportunities to reform them.
He said that the system had only a punitive nature, adding that prison officers were seen as wicked people instead of being seen taking care of people disadvantaged by circumstances.
According to him, the country needs to “decolonise” the prison system and change the prison officers from looking like another law enforcement agents.
“They should be a civil group and a social agent rehabilitating and looking after prisoners; working together with other social groups to create mental and attitudinal change in the prisoners.
“Everything we know about prison is colonial and this is wrong because we see the prison walls high up with barbed wires on top which is so oppressing.
“While we need to secure prisoners, we need a better way,’’ he said.
The NCPC boss stressed the need to establish farms and semi-industries in prisons, where prisoners could be made to work in order to become productive and also learn something new.
He said that prisoners could be empowered by what they produced so that they would be able resettle after serving out their prison terms.
“It is not just working for free because you are a prisoner; it is working for the development of the nation and for your own progress too.”
He urged the church to be more involved in the reformation of prisoners through preaching the gospel, adding that government needed the church to drive the change.
