ETIM EFFIONG
The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, has urged state governors to sign death warrants of 3,008 inmates who are on death row at custodial facilities nationwide.
The minister said this during the inauguration of newly constructed headquarters of the Nigerian Correctional Service in Osogbo.
According to him, the national custodial facilities have a maximum capacity for 57,278 inmates and not 68,747 inmates it now has. He added that the number is made up of 67,422 males and 1,325 females. He noted that prison congestion remained the challenge of the service.
Aregbesola stated that 50,992 inmates representing 74 per cent of the total population of inmates in the nation’s custodial centres are awaiting trial, while only 17,755 inmates which is a mere 26 per cent are the actual convicts.
He said: “There are presently 3,008 condemned criminals waiting for their date with the executioners in our meagre custodial facilities. This consists of 2,952 males and 56 females.
“In cases where an appeal has been exhausted and the convicts are not mounting any challenge to their conviction, the state should go ahead, to do the needful and bring closure to their cases.”
Aregbesola noted that state governors have an alternative of setting some of the condemned inmates free on compassionate grounds, especially those who have grown old on account of the long time they have been in custody and those that are terminally ill.
The minister said the 3,000 high-capacity custodial centre which is being built by the Federal Government in Kano, Rivers States and Abuja, would be extended to the six geo-political zones in the country and is expected to ease congestion considerably and enhance the capacity to manage the facilities for corrections.