The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, said his ministry plans to secure the release of 4,000 inmates in a bid to decongest prisons nationwide.
Tunji-Ojo, who stated this during an interview on Arise TV, said the interior ministry is working with the private sector to pay fines for inmates as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
The minister said several inmates were being held nationwide due to their inability to pay fines.
He also promised that ministry will ensure the fines are paid and inmates released within four weeks.
“Immediately I assumed office, the first thing I did was set up a small committee to be able to review the situation of our correctional centres vis-à-vis the inmates as they are, and we discovered that over 4,000 of these inmates are still in custody due to their inability to pay fines.
“We looked at how much the total fine is. It’s about five hundred and something million, and I can tell you we’ve gone very far dealing with the private sector in terms of CSR to put this money together, and I’m sure that in the next three weeks, or four weeks maximum, because I like to be held responsible for what I say, so in the next four weeks, by the grace of God, we would have been able to pay those fines for over 4,000 people. That will reduce from the present almost 79,000 inmates to about 75,000.
“I would say that we must also understand that when it comes to the congestion of prison, it’s not an entirely Ministry of Interior thing. Yes, the Ministry of Interior must take the lead, but obviously, we are going to work with the attorney general because you cannot just open your gates
“We must look at setting up that sort of interministerial relationship that we are already working on to be able to expedite cases based on the Administration of Criminal Justice System, so we are already looking in that particular direction and also to further decongest,” said the minister, who stressed that prisons across the country are holding more inmates than what they were designed for.
The minister also cited the overcrowding currently being experienced in Lagos prisons.
He said: “The situation of the correctional service is very worrisome, for instance, in Lagos Command, all the correctional centres were built for like 4,800 inmates, but today we have over 9,000 inmates, so that’s like over 100 per cent in Lagos alone.
“We will definitely decongest our correctional centres by maybe 67 % which will be a very huge one, we have looked at the financial implication of it, we’re already working on that and I can tell you that in due course we’ll come back to Nigerians to tell you when exactly this will actually be actualized,” he added.
