Non-governmental and civil society organisations with focus on justice sector-reforms says about 70% of inmates are those awaiting trial and who may never be liable for any jail term.
The group stated this during a meeting hosted by the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) held in Yola, the Adamawa State capital.
The groups in a statement signed by the Head of Communications and Knowledge Management of the PPDC, Munachi Okoro, decried the preponderance of awaiting trial inmates in Nigeria’s correctional centres.
The groups described the rise in pre-trial inmates as alarming, noting that as at December 2023, more than 53,000 inmates were awaiting trial across 253 correctional centres.
“The growing number of pre-trial detainees, many held for years without trial under dire conditions, poses significant human rights concerns, overwhelming the justice system and correctional facilities,” the statement said.
It noted that the meeting of the justice sector-reform was part of the outcomes from the Reforming Pretrial Detention in Nigeria Phase II Project supported by the US Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
The Yola meeting brought together key organisations from the justice sector to discuss crucial topics towards providing free legal services, among other things, to facilitate trials and decongest correctional centres.
Representatives of NGOs and CSOs at the meeting spoke of what their organisations were doing and would be doing to make way for drastic reduction in the number of awaiting trial inmates in facilities around them.
Veteran journalist and recipient of A.B.C Yola, Reporter of the Year Award (1997), Hassan Umar Shallpella, works with WAP as a Regional Correspondence. He was trained at Institute of Mass Communication and Technology Jos and Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Training School Lagos.He was a News desk Editor and a Correspondent at the Punch newspaper and till 2019, was the Deputy Editor ofThe Scope newspaper.
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