Imprisonment in Nigeria: A Fate Worse than Death, By Onikepo Braithwaite
Death Penalty
On February 14th, 2017, we featured Olawale Fapohunda and Chino Obiagwu, who are against the death penalty generally, and the Lagos State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Adeniji Kazeem, on the issue of the new Lagos State Anti- Kidnapping Law and its provision for the death penalty for kidnappers whose victims die in the course of the kidnap.
While Lagos State found it necessary to ‘up the ante’ and impose the death penalty with the increase in the rate of kidnapping, Olawale Fapohunda and Chino Obiagwu felt that apprehending the culprits with the fear of punishment, would be a far more effective deterrent to kidnapping, especially as the imposition of the death penalty has not stopped other crimes like armed robbery, for example.
While I agree with Lagos State and the imposition of the death penalty by the Anti- Kidnapping Law, I also agree that the fear of apprehension and punishment is an effective deterrent. However, I see things a bit differently.
Antanimora Prison, Madagascar
I was watching a program on the Crime Channel last week; a program that features the worst and toughest prisons in the world. That day, Antanimora Prison in Madagascar, Eastern Africa was the focus. It is purportedly one of the toughest and worst prisons in the world; overcrowding, unimaginable filth, no running water, disease, epidemics, rape, hunger, lack of access to legal advice and representation due to abject poverty, and so on are prevalent there.
Madagascar itself is apparently a very poor country, so you can imagine the condition of the prison, or rather, you probably cannot or would not want to imagine it. Horrid, deplorable, disgusting, abhorrent, shocking, hellish, to mention a few synonyms that describe the place.
Nigerian Prisons
Guess what? Looking at the place reminded me so much of the inside of a Nigerian prison. Antanimora Prison bore such strong similarities to the Nigerian prisons. I thought to myself, given the choice of life imprisonment in any of our Nigerian prison facilities and the death penalty, I would probably opt for the death penalty! Being in a Nigerian prison to me, seems like a fate worse than death. I decided that by imposing the death penalty, Lagos State is letting these kidnapping criminals off the hook rather easily. They would certainly face untold hardship and unimaginable pain and suffering, if they had to serve a life sentence in any Nigerian prison.
Government needs to undertake some prison reform, sharply! I’m not saying that prison should be transformed into a five-star hotel, but people should not be treated worse than animals, especially as so many occupants of the prisons are not convicted criminals, but are awaiting trial; some of them may even have been randomly arrested for crimes as ridiculous as ‘wandering’, and because they cannot afford legal representation or to bribe their way out, they just end up languishing in prison. There was a 75 year old man in Antanimora. He said he had been in prison for 38 years and he had never seen a lawyer, talk less of being taken to court!
Antanimora is legendary like Nigerian prisons, for overcrowding. Originally built to house 800 inmates, it has about 3,000 occupants. Just like Ikoyi Prison that was built with a capacity for 800 prisoners, but houses 2,239 and Port Harcourt Prison with a capacity for 804 but houses a whopping 3,593. People sleep on their sides, almost on top of each other, an arrangement that looks just like a mass grave.
Vile Conditions in Nigerian Prisons are Inhumane
Unlike Olawale Fapohunda, Chino Obiagwu and the learned Senior Advocate, Femi Falana, who believe that the death penalty is inhumane and unconstitutional, I am probably using the same constitutional provisions that they are relying on, but in my own case, to say that I believe that incarcerating people under such vile conditions is also inhumane and contrary to Sections 17(2)(c) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended in 2010)(1999 Constitution) which provides that “government actions shall be humane” and 34(1)(a)which provides that “no person shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman and degrading treatment”.
Apart from the gross overcrowding in our prisons, there is a high level of filth, lack of hygiene and disease. In my days as a young lawyer in the very early 90’s, I remember conducting several criminal cases, one of which involved two young men that were arrested for examination malpractice and were facing 21 years imprisonment. They had to be interviewed, and as the ‘baby lawyer’ in the chambers at the time, the burden of going to Ikoyi Prison to conduct the interview, naturally fell on me.
My Two Clients
When my two clients were brought out to meet with me in some dirty kind of visitors’ room, I was shocked at how bad their condition was. They were already quite ill from their short stay in prison. There had also been an outbreak of scabies, a skin infestation, where tiny mites get inside the skin and lay eggs there. The outward manifestation of the skin condition is a terrible rash and relentless itching. Antanimora Prison also has that type of thing. Lice, mites, rats etc; sometimes epidemics like the plague, also break out in Antanimora.
Of course, the boys had contacted scabies. To make matters worse, one of them also had jaundice too. I was practically sitting on the edge of what I thought was a somewhat suspect chair, when they came in. When they started scratching their bodies furiously, I had to ask them “ki lon se yin ti en hora be?” (“what’s wrong with you that you are scratching your bodies like that?”). When they informed me of their skin condition, I flew off the edge of the chair that I was sitting on. Throughout the duration of the interview, I prayed that I would not be infected with scabies. They had not been given any medical care per se. As soon as I finished conducting the interview, instead of going back to the office to write my report, I ran straight home to disinfect my clothes, bath in dettol and change.
I was able to win their case, but sadly, the pressure of the deplorable prison conditions was simply too much for one of the boys to bear. He died before he could enjoy the fruits of his victory. Today, the prison conditions which were already terrible then, have deteriorated even further to unimaginable depths.
Some Proposals for Prison Reform
In our January 3rd, 2017 edition, Olawale Fapohunda and I, in our piece “2017: Administration of Justice Options for Buhari Government” made some proposals for Prison Reform. For instance, the establishment of a separate Prisons Service Commission to take over from the combined Immigration, Prisons Service and Civil Defence Board, appointment of a Chief Visitor of Prisons to conduct regular inspections of all prison facilities in Nigeria and see to the complaints of prison staff and prisoners, address the issue of the poor prison conditions, decongestion of prisons with emphasis on those that are awaiting trial and access to legal advice and representation for them, employment of more prison staff, review of the laws like the 1972 Prison Act, and provision of adequate medical care for inmates, among several other proposals.
Government needs to heed to our advice as regards Prison Reform.
Credit: Onikepo Braithwaite, Thisday
Sounds like a prolific rhetoric that imprisonment in Nigeria is ‘ a fate worse than death’.Except for those sub-humans who see prison confinement as a ‘holiday resort’ because there is where they socialise best, or feel their safest, then humans in general (and animals) prefer to be un-contained or restricted of their liberty and freedom.
As a criminologist, my view on Nigeria’s penal process is an all-encompassing antiquated and obsolete system which over the years should have been dismantled and reconstructed. It takes a multi-agency, all encompassing responsibility to reform the prison system. The practice of increased prison population denotes the retributive, punitive approaches to the justice disbursement. It is more demeaning when most detained could be found ‘innocent’ or wantonly detained at the front-line police process. Firs-time and misdemeanous offenders do not need to be detained for any length of time where their individual details are available, probably with a known permanent place of abode and next-of-kin to vouch for their compliance with bail conditions – this takes a lot of work-load burden off the police and subsequent processing department after them; eg, the courts. Yes, the ethical position of any government is to be ‘tough on crime’ but it does not mandate indiscriminate ‘lock-up’ which derives no gains of a reformed penal process, in the case of Nigeria, the loss of such ethical principles (Human rights, civil liberty; etc) as reformation, rehabilitation and deterrence. Do we need to be sarcastic that the prison, as a sub-culture, can also be a ‘school of learning’ for those who had been driven into desperation by mingling with criminal minds, even when they never pre-conceive such acts until they were detained.
Essentially, the general opinion and reality in Nigeria is the endemic corruption in all strata of services, in which notably, the prison system has emerged at the fore-front, especially in offering preference to prisoners who have ‘what it takes’ to live comfortably in incarceration. A lack of visionary and knowledgeable leadership, corrupt practices of diverting funds meant to reform or rehabilitate prisons all play majorly to override the essence of prison reform where structures and infrastructures do not show signs of improvement, with ‘glossed – up’ poster campaigns presented to show intangible progressive achievement of some prisoners such as achieving skills or qualification, who probably did not fit into that system in the first place, except that somebody wanted them to be there. Largely, it is not guaranteed that they are not going to re-offend.
The prison system in Holland, recently recorded a substantial decrease in imprisonment; this has been going on for decades, with about 35% of beds empty, and with overall evaluation based on reformed, modernised and humane conditions of their prison system. Here in the UK, pre-Brexit, Dutch and other member states’ nationals would rather apply to serve their sentences in their home country – which is a relieve on the British prison system.
Prison reform is never a unilateral or single department concern; to achieve a reform, the police, the courts, welfare and health services, and the local communities where prisons are situated, need to jointly work together to separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’. The need for a wider inter-agency service provision will inevitably yield a decrease in number of detained inmates, sentencing statistics of the courts and the expertise of psychological/sociological expertise used to assess and determine the circumstance of individuals, thus, leading to a prediction for recidivism or mental/psychological impairment versus criminal intent. In this regard, a tariff system can be proposed by the police, courts and welfare services so that expedient processing of offences commission can be put to bed, moving forward.
While the current thinking and policies of the government is centred around ‘means and ends’ these inadvertently promote a rampant ‘hustle’ by agents to act in irreversibly unethical and undisciplined manner, to the detriment of the incarcerated, the detained, and their friends and family. To the communities, a lack of confidence in the ‘mission and vision’ of the criminal justice system.