Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola has announced that plans have been concluded to ensure that henceforth, state governments in the country are made to provide feeding and accommodation to inmates in their states.
He made this known while speaking at a 2-day High-Level Conference on Decongestion and Corrections Management held in Abuja.
According to him, the Federal Government would no longer bear such burdens.
According to him, with the amendment of the 1999 constitution which has now placed the issue of correctional services on the concurrent list, states are empowered to establish their own Correctional Services and facilities.
Aregbesola stated that states which do not have correctional facilities would have to pay the Federal Government for the feeding and accommodation of their inmates.
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He highlighted that currently, the Federal Government spends over N22 billion to feed inmates across 244 correctional facilities in the country.
The minister said this is draining the Federal Government’s revenue and was casing problems for the country in so many ways.
He also revealed that 4,067 inmates are in custody for being unable to pay fines of N1 million and below.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government on Thursday said no fewer than 52,436 inmates of the correctional centres nationwide are awaiting trial.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, Dr Shuaib Belgore, who stated this during the two-day High Conference on Decongestion and Corrections Management in Abuja, the nation’s capital, explained that while 23,071 are convicted persons, 3,322 are condemned inmates on death row.
Belogore also maintained that there has been a steady rise in the population of the custodial centres with at least 80% of the inmates awaiting trial.
According to him, there are 244 custodial centres nationwide, with a 75,507-inmate population, thereby leading to 82 of them being overcrowded.