The Nigerian Correctional Service, NCS, has disclosed that no fewer than 22 de-radicalized former members of Boko Haram have sat for the Senior School Certificate Examination, WAEC.
NCS Comptroller-General, Ja’afaru Ahmed, who was represented by the service spokesman, Francis Enobore made the disclosure while addressing reporters yesterday in Abuja.
Ahmed, while stating that that about 2,745 condemned inmates were awaiting execution in various correctional facilities across the country, urged governors to sign their death warrant.
He said: ”As part of our rehabilitation process, 22 former members of Boko Haram who have been deradicalized by the Nigerian Correctional Service have sat for the Senior School Certificate Examination.”
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The NCS boss stated that the Administration of the Criminal Justice Act was meant to hasten the trial of suspects and enhance the decongestion of correctional facilities.
“Governors are not willing to sign death sentences of condemned inmates, neither are they ready to commute their death sentence to life imprisonment,” Ahmed said.
The NCS CG stated that about 24 states has domesticated the ACJA, stressing that the Act would help in decongesting correctional facilities “as some of its provisions empower correctional centres to reject inmates so that facilities are not overcrowded.”
“In order to improve access to justice for pre-trial detainees, a total of 382 operational vehicles have been procured and distributed between 2016 and 2018, for inmates to be taken to court for hearing as and when due,” Ahmed said.
THISDAY