By Gift Olivia Samuel, The Sight News
ABUJA: A project to strengthen the capacity of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) has been launched in Abuja, to ensure the safe, secure and humane custody of pre-trial detainees and sentenced prisoners in selected facilities in North-Eastern States.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Country Office Nigeria (CONIG) and the United States Embassy and the U.S Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) on Wednesday, launched the project, in a bid to assist NCoS in building sustainable capacities in selected main facilities in the North East.
With 71% of an overall prison population of 71,584 being inmates who are awaiting trial and the reported rise in violent crime across Nigeria, the 3-year project, which is funded by INL, will encompass detainees and prisoners held for an (alleged) association with Boko Haram and include tailored interventions for this particular category.
In a special remark, the U.S Ambassador to Nigeria, Amb. Mary Beth Leonard, said the project was developed to strengthen the capacity of NCoS in the facilities in North Eastern states of Nigeria, specifically Borno, Gombe and Adamawa State.
According to her, this project “will assist the correctional Service in building sustainable capacities within their facilities to strengthen core prison management practices and to promote human rights. This builds upon our existing history of working with NCoS to strengthen access to justice and rule of law for inmates.
“Through the INL, we welcome the opportunity to work again with NCoS and the UNODC to help manage the prison population in a safe, secured and humane manner in the North-East, enhance access to Justice for detainees awaiting trials including those accused of participating in acts of terrorism and strengthening prison-based rehabilitation Programmes for reentry into the community”, she said.
Amb. Leonard also noted that the problem of timely access to justice for individuals accused of crimes has been one of the continued challenges faced by government partners, adding that the serious instability in the North East further tasks Nigeria’s criminal justice institutions’ resources and capacity and as a result, detainees spend excessive length of time in pre-trial detention straining the resources of NCoS.
“A key part of this project will seek to ensure inmates accused of terrorism are appropriately categorized and trial procedures are expedited to reduce the length of time they spend in pre-trial custody”, she said.
Also speaking, the UNODC Country Representative in Nigeria, Dr. Oliver Stolpe, disclosed that the project will build on the extensive experience and tools which UNODC has developed over decades to assist countries in managing their prison systems in line with international standards and norms, and to address the needs of that specific categories of violent extremists offenders or those that are suspected to be such offenders.
Stolpe further noted that, building sustainable rehabilitation and reintegration capacities of NCoS including with regards to the management of violent extremist prisoners will ultimately help to reduce recidivism and thereby limit the risk of Boko Haram and other violent extremists groups as well as organized criminal groups to recruit former inmates.
In his welcome address, the Controller General of Corrections, NCoS, Haliru Nababa, stated that it was his “firm belief that, like every other intervention the NCoS has enjoyed from both UNODC and INL, this project will go a long way in aiding significant value to the operations and administration of the Correctional Service”.
The project aligns with the 2021 United Nations Common Position on Incarceration and will complement the efforts of the Nigerian government and in particular of the NCoS to meet the requirements laid out in the Nelson Mandela Rules which have been domesticated in the 2019 Nigeria Correctional Service Act.
