By John Chuks Azu
President Muhammadu Buhari has signed into law the Act amending
the name of the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) to Nigerian
Correctional Service (NCS). The action has raised major issues
among them: funding, the involvement of states, private sector and
NGOs, infrastructure and manpower.
The president’s accent which was announced by his aide on
National Assembly matters, Ita Enang, on August 14, came 11 years
after the bill was first presented before the National Assembly and
19 years since proposals for reform of the country’s prisons were
made.
The bill was first presented before the Senate in January 2008
by former member of the Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba, and was read a
second time in 2010.
The Act signed by the president has two faculties: The Custodial
Service and Non-custodial Service. The Custodial Service, among
other roles, will custody and take control of persons legally
interned in safe, secure and humane conditions, conveying remand
persons to and from courts in motorized formations; Identifying the
existence and causes of anti-social behaviours of inmates;
Conducting risk and needs assessment aimed at developing
appropriate correctional treatment methods for reformation,
rehabilitation and reintegration; and implementing reformation and
rehabilitation programmes to enhance the reintegration of inmates
back into the society, among others.
The Act further provides “that where an inmate sentenced to
death has exhausted all legal procedures for appeal and a period of
10 years has elapsed without execution of the sentence, the Chief
Judge may commute the sentence of death to life imprisonment. And
Section 12 of the Act empowers the state Controller of the Service
to reject more intakes of inmates where it is apparent that the
correctional centre in question is filled to capacity.”
The Non-Custodial Service faculty is responsible for the
administration of non-custodial measures, namely: “Community
service, probation, parole, restorative justice measures and such
other measures as a court of competent jurisdiction may order.
Restorative Justice measure approved in the Act includes
victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, community
mediation and other conciliatory measures as may be deemed
necessary at pre-trial, trial, during imprisonment or even post-
imprisonment stages.”
Some of the challenges include:
Funding challenges
The adequate implementation of the new Act would involve much
funding. In the 2019 fiscal year, South Africa budgeted R23,848bn,
that is over N500bn for its correctional service, although some of
the reformation projects are funded by grants and partnerships.
According to the Nigerian Prisons Service website, there are
73,995 inmates across the various prisons in the 36 states and the
FCT. Of this figure, 23,568 are convicted inmates while 50,427,
which is about 69 percent of the inmates, are on awaiting
trial.
Many of the projects for correction and rehabilitation would
require more funding because of the use of technology and manpower
that would be needed, and the need to recruit and retraining of
professionals into the correctional service, experts say.
For instance, the Executive Director of Prisoners Reform and
Welfare Action (PRAWA), Dr Uju Agomoh, said in April 2018 the bill
was sent to the president who refused to accent then for two
reasons one of which was Part 44(d) of the bill which proposes 5
percent of the funding for the non-custodial funds to come from
fines from the courts. “We said that didn’t do much damage because
there were other sources of funding.”
The role of states, NGOs, partners
Another major issue in the new Act is the role of the states in
the effective implementation especially, the non-custodial
measures. Parts 44 and 45 of the Administration of Criminal Justice
Act (ACJA) shows how states can help in non-custodial measures.
“Many states, including the states that have adopted the ACJA
have not fully activated this part,” Agomoh said.
“The third is also to ensure that the real focus is on
corrections not punishment, and that explains the name change, and
finally the whole notion of ensuring and facilitating the
reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration. So it is more than a
name and there are many things packed in it.”
“My hope is that the Federal Government would fund this very
well and I am also hoping that the states would not just fold their
arms and watch the Federal Government struggle to fix the prisons
and the criminal justice system,” says Sylvester Uhaa, who is the
Executive Director of Citizens United in the Rehabilitation of
Errants (CURE).
“As I have always said, prisons maybe a federal institution,
most of the inmates in prisons are indigenes of those states. So, I
am taking this opportunity to support the Federal Government in
implementing this new law. Also, NGOs, development partners and
religious organisations should contribute.”
Reformation facilities
New facilities would be required for technical and skills
training of inmates and equipment such as Electronic Monitoring
Systems for the non-custodial faculty.
A human rights lawyer, Hameed Ajibola Jimoh, said more
facilities to enable family members to visit and interact with
their members in custody should be provided as part of the
restorative justice in the new Act.
Manpower needs
The custodial system means that there would be a new head of
that system while the Comptroller General of Prisons will remain in
charge of custodial system and trained supervisors would have to be
recruited for the programme, says Uhaa.
“If you send people on parole, probation or if you put people on
community service, it would require people to monitor them. So, it
would require resources,” he said.
PRAWA’s Agomoh also said it is not just about the name, but
there are different things that are packed in this very progressive
piece of legislation.
“The first thing in Section 2(1) (a) to (d) of the Act is that
it wants to ensure that the operations of the now Nigerian
Correctional Service is in tandem with international human rights
practices, meaning it will be in compliance with the United Nations
standard minimum rate for the treatment of prisoners known as the
Mandela Rules; that it will be in tandem with the Bangkok Rules,
which deals with women,” he said.
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