 The Nigerian Correctional Service has disclosed that thousands of inmates in prisons across the country are without trial. Assistant Comptroller General Gimba Dumbua made the revelation on Wednesday in Abuja at a conference on the Congestion and Corrections Administration. The official noted that as of May 9, 75,000, I beg your pardon, 436 inmates are in correctional centres, while 52,446 are awaiting trial inmates. The ACG also said over 70% of them have overstayed in custody due to the lateness in sentencing and keeping them for more than normal time. He also added that the efforts of Comptroller General Haliru Nababa to get the prisons decongested was hindered by delays in prosecution. The Nigerian Correctional Service, only option right now, according to him, is to transfer inmates from overcrowded custodial facilities to others with available space. What's running us to discuss this is Immanuel Amoran, he's a legal practitioner, and Ngozi in U.S.C.O.B. at Bafo. She is the founder of the Custodial Reformation Foundation. Thank you so much, gentlemen and lady, for joining us. Good evening. Good evening. How are you? Good evening. How are you? Great. Let me start with you, Baris Immanuel. What exactly do you think are the main reasons, aside from the fact that we have established that some of these prisoners have had a longer time in prison because they've not been able to get a court date? What exactly do you think is responsible for the delay in the wills of justice and for these men to get their day in court? Well, the first thing I'll say here is that we need to be honest with ourselves in Nigeria. People who find themselves working for government do not want to do what they are paid to do. And Nigerians seem to like punishing them. I'll tell you one story about 20 years ago, I was in Uyaw and a man was brought to court for a waiting trial matter. The man was arrested on the road and he was charged to court the next day. He was walking on the road with his radio and he was asked for the receipt. He didn't have his receipt. Those days was Uyaw's, we see people walking on the road with radio in the state there. And everyone was detained and tried to court the next morning. The next day, there was nobody to bail him. He was granted to bail him because his family didn't know where he was. Wow. He was taken into a prison custody and when I saw him, he had spent about 10 years in incarceration. And that day was a very bad day because I was so mad or much younger then. And I confronted the magistrate and the magistrate said, well, nobody has come. I said, what do you mean nobody has come? This man is an idea. The man had scabies all over his body and because, you know, if you are an awaiting trial person in prison custody, you are not in the custody of the prison. You are supposed to be, you are not, you are supposed to be in the custody of the police but the police does not have facility for you once you have been charged to court. So you are kept in the prison custody but the prison does not count you as one of those people who have been sentenced. So they do not care for you. Wow. So incredibly, if you don't have family members, or if family members don't know where you are, you will have money to soak the baths. You may not have space. You will be pushed to corners unless you are well to do. You can pay for space. You can get people to help you inside. It's quite tough there. So unfortunately these things are things that can be determined by legislation and the executive branch doing what it ought to do by separating people who have been convicted or allowing people who have been granted their previous leave. They are asking the court to allow those who have been granted their previous leave and have come to a court to be prosecuted. To be allowed to go back on that administrative bail. Instead of you placing the stigma conditions, when you have not tried the person, if a man was arrested and is able to come back to court and be charged to court, why give other conditions? Why not keep it on for the previous administrative bail? That's the part of the problem of the courts. A lot of judges are now taking this method. But most judges will not see this. Especially those who came from the magistrates. A lot of the magistrates follow the old ways. Oh, what are the conditions? He has to fulfill this. He has to fulfill that. What is wrong with a person who willingly came to court, worked himself to court, or gave himself to court? You're not giving additional commissions for bail. Why do that? I mean the bail cannot meet those conditions. You take him into the prison custody. But another thing, again, to be really honest, is that we should ask ourselves how many prisons have been bailed since 1979? How many prisons have been bailed in Nigeria? What is the executive doing with all this money budgeted to the Minister of Internal Affairs for prison care of the prisoners? If we have had a population explosion which has taken us over almost 300% of our previous population in 1970, how come we are still keeping those prisons that we had in 1970? How many have we built in the whole of Aqaba and Cross River? But I know there's only one new prison that was built by Professor Laqabbe, because they broke the prison wall. I mean the whole prison. And they had to break it up to make new rules. They had to go and build a bigger prison which is the better prison where everybody in Aqaba, every big man in Aqaba now, wants to go to. Let's ask the honest, let's look at the statistics. How many prisons have been bailed with this kind of explosion of population and the fact that crime rate has increased tremendously after the civil war? Okay. I will come back to you. Let me go to Ngozi. Ngozi, it's interesting because I've spoken to you about what you're doing and the Custodial Reform Foundation. And you've told me about also something similar to what Baisal Moran is talking about. A person that was, you know, taken for some petty crime but then ended up spending more time in prison. But he's talking about alternatives and better ways that we can, people can get justice or regain their freedom. And I know that the laws in the United States allows you, you're entitled to a call, one call, to either a friend or a family so you can actually have somebody come bail you. Is that also part of our constitutional rights here in Nigeria? And if that is it, how many people have access to those calls? And do we even have phones in those prisons where you can call? Ngozi, you need to unmute yourself because we can't hear you. Ngozi, are you there? Can you hear us? We can't hear you. You need to unmute yourself so we can hear you. Go ahead. Yes, go ahead. We couldn't hear you. Go ahead and answer. Okay, can you hear me now? Okay, yes. So they do have the opportunity to make that call and they have the right to make that call. Just like the barrister said, the call, for example, now someone is being picked along the road, does the person have the number of his closest relatives, for example, the person might not even be with a phone, with his mobile phone and then ends up being arrested for reasons he doesn't know about. So yes, they are connected to that call, but we see situations whereby the person doesn't have the phone of his relatives at hand to make that call immediately. So that person is now having that situation whereby the charge is drawn up against him and then he sends to the magistrate's court and they're remanded from there. So the issue now is we need to avoid these delays. There is need to ensure that this speedy trial is taking very seriously. For example, when you charge, when a charge is drafted and the person is taken to the magistrate's court, when the magistrate's court doesn't have the jurisdiction to attain that matter, the magistrate's court has a duty to transfer the file to the Ministry of Justice whereby the Ministry of Justice now have to file a charge against the accused person at the High Court. Now it is during this period we will say the person is waiting to be tried. So why do we have to wait such long time to have their charge filed at the High Court so that the necessary thing would be done? So there is need to close the gap and then short speedy trial when such instances come up. What about those who, you know, because you know the law also prescribes that you can, I don't, again, in other places you have, the state can provide you with a lawyer so that you can quickly get your day in court. Do we have such people in Nigeria who would, I mean the Ministry of Justices and different states across the Federation and even the federal ministries, do we have lawyers who Pro Bono will be, you know, there to defend these guys for the state? Well, we don't do it for the state but because to the Refund Foundation, that is one of our main, our objectives. We do take up cases Pro Bono for those who are waiting trial and we also try as much as possible to ensure that their trial is expedited because that is very important. If you are charged and within six months you can determine whether someone is innocent or guilty. It's very, I think it will be more relieving for the inmates or the person who is charged at least within six months you can get your men's, you know whether you're innocent or not because most of these cases, if after five years you find out that the person is innocent, you wasted the person's five years, five years of his life. If you wasted the person's 17 years, you've seen cases as much as 17 years only to get the person to start at the end of the day because there is no evidence, there is no witness to that matter. So why should we, why should these people's time be wasted? That is actually one of the reasons why the Refund Foundation is addressing at the moment making sure that we go into the custodial centers, the correctional centers check out, look out for those who are not going to cut and pick up their matters and a lot of all these cases actually will be funding because sometimes you start by filing their bail, when you file their bail then they will come up with a charge, that's when they sometimes become serious to prosecute the matter. But when you don't, when you just leave the person and not, you don't call up, you don't call the attention of the Ministry of Justice to it. In most cases, the file just lies down there and the person is just kept in a custodial just for that long period. So it's very important that any file that goes to the Ministry of Justice is treated within time so that these people don't have to spend so much time waiting to be released. Okay, I'm going to come back to you because we have very little time but by Salmarin, recently the Minister of Interior complained about the fact that it costs the prisons about a million plus to feed one prisoner yearly and now they want to move that responsibility to states. I'll give you two minutes to see how this is feasible. Remember you've just also talked about the fact that there are not enough prisons, the capacity is bigger and we hardly have big prison facilities across the country. But then the average Nigerian will also say that we also have deficit in so many things. Why should we prioritize prisons? No, can I say two things. On the issue of pro bono, there are a lot of lawyers that are doing that. There is another organization called LACRIP that is doing that vigorously. That has a lot of lawyers, about 200 lawyers that are quietly doing, assisting in defending Nigerians who are in custody. But you see, like I said earlier, we have major problems. What stops the federal government from allowing people to build private prisons? Why must government do everything? What stops government from allowing people to be born treasures? So that if you have granted bail, instead of using somebody, you go to look for shorty or do the... You just send it to the bail bonds, yes. Yes. I can take this man on bail. And the person, the bail is fixed. The bail bond is fixed. The man pays it and makes sure if you do not come, the man loses his money. But you pay, at the end of the day, the man does it as a business. There are a lot of such business opportunities that you can create. If the laws are mended, it's like until we had GSA, until the Niger Act was amended. You could not do any private calls in Niger. You had to go through Niger. But as soon as the Act was amended and you had the... You were able to have GSA. We've had other telecommunications, private sectors moving vigorously. The system of making calls prior to now has changed. Before you... I had only one line to make calls. I did it. I must go to... We must go to my office. We must... You needed to lock it or somebody would take it to it. Now, everybody look at what we're doing. Making calls. We're conversing. We're doing television. Yes. When those days, you had only one election on the street. Yes. So we can do things by, of course, electing people who know what to do with the national assembly. When the state has to elect family. We cannot hold this day our country back like this. Okay. We should allow the consider system to improve, to come up to the standards available globally. We can have private sectors running prisons as we have the people running private schools. Okay. Until recently, private schools were not there. And we only had missionary schools and government schools. Okay. All right. So we can do this. We must think out of the box. All right. Finally, Ngozi, because we're almost out of time. Are there efforts by you and the likes of you who are, you know, non-governmental organizations, a group of pro bono lawyers who are trying to reform society. Are you pushing for some sort of reforms, especially for the prisons and the legislative system that surrounds incarcerations and speedy delivery of justice? First of all, what we are pushing mainly for is to make sure that the investigating police officers do the right thing, because that is where the arrest starts. If you're arresting somebody and you're not objective about it, if you're arresting somebody and you're being sentimental or you're being induced to keep detaining such person, that person will continue to suffer. So now every IPO has to do their job objectively. For example, someone writes a petition through a police station and the IPO is asking the person, okay, who are you suspecting? You mentioned a name. And in Nigeria, most of us are religious, we are spiritual. You may just, the person might be like, how are you supposed to personally just wake up and then saw the person in the dream and just said, yes, I'm suspecting this person. Then the police officer goes, picks the person and then that's the suspect. Okay. You are arrested. You are arrested. Fine. And then bail yourself. That's next in your year. So bail yourself, bail yourself, which works and get yourself a short scene. What if the person doesn't have it? The duty is on the IPO to investigate that person. Ask serious questions. Release the person if there is no evidence against the person. Instead of asking the person to get paid to get bailed or get a short scene. If the person, if there's no evidence against the person, release the person. There's no need to ask the person to get himself a short scene during that point. I think if the IPOs are objecting in their doings, we will have minimal issue of throwing them in there, then waiting on the government to feed them, then telling us they use one million to feed one person. That's 2,700 Naira per day or thereabout. 2,700 Naira and you hear reports of them eating beans with stones. And then 2,700 Naira. Look at 83,000 Naira a month. That is above the minimum wage of a civil servant. Okay. So I think the government should actually look at it. And use that aspect to actually increase the minimum wage. Let's see, what you're telling us is that prisoners are eating and enjoying more than you see in civil servant who is collecting the minimum wage? Well, from what I hear both the lady and the gentlemen saying, there's a lot more attention that needs to be focused in the corrections side of life. So I want to thank you for the work that you're doing. I want to thank you by saying, Manuel also for the work that you guys are doing. Let's hope that after May 29 we will see some source of attention in that area. Emmanuel Moran is a legal practitioner. So is Ngozi Abafu, who's the founder of the Studio Reform Foundation. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, for speaking with us. Thank you. All right. Well, that's the show tonight. We want to thank you all for participating. And of course, if you want to catch up on all our previous episodes and conversations on the show, go to PLOS TV Africa on YouTube, subscribe and follow all our programs. I am Mary Annico and you have a pleasant evening. Good night.