REFORMATIVE OR PUNITIVE: THE EFFECT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL AMENDMENT ON THE NIGERIAN PRISON SYSTEM.

In a nation plagued with incessant insecurity, and loss of lives and properties through violent acts and conducts, it is needless to say that the prisons and correctional services, in collaboration with the Nigerian Police Force play a vital role in the curbing of these acts. Prisons can either be incubators for violent ideology or institutions for reform. According to Manaworker, the purpose of imprisonment is to protect society from the harm of anti-social elements. In a United States Frederick Report, it was divulged that prisons’ goal to reduce the chances of reoffending is attempted in a number of ways; by making prison the worst places to live in and compromising human dignity; by confining people in prisons for as long as possible and put an extra burden on the economy of the state; or by making prison settings capable enough to prepare inmates for a useful and law-abiding life on release. The rehabilitative prison management theory was a product of experiences that had consumed the two former approaches and emerged with the focus on inculcating the offender with the values and norms for a law-abiding and productive life, rather than intimidating him or her.

In recent years, there have been demands for the constitution to be amended to restructure the country; in other words, to devolve more powers to the state and local governments. But beyond name corrections, the constitutional amendment bills sought to alter, modify or amend sections of the constitution. On March 1, 2023, the Senate and the House of Representatives voted separately for 68 proposed items earlier this year. The National Assembly had transmitted 35 constitution amendment bills to the president for assent in January. The amendment process saw representation from 27 Houses of Assembly, while nine states – Gombe, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kwara, Oyo, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba, and Zamfara – did not participate. The newly signed bills encompass various alterations, ranging from changes to local government area names to addressing food security in Nigeria, one of which was the deletion of the ”prisons” in the exclusive legislative list and redesignation as “correctional service” in the concurrent legislative list. The former position of the law states that only the national assembly could legislate on prisons. While the amendment in the second schedule, part 1 of the constitution, the word “prisons” has now been replaced with “correctional services”. The national assembly has the power to make laws for correctional services in any part of the federation, including the establishment of custodial centres.

Sponsored by the House Spokesperson, Ben Kalu the Bill which seeks to decongest the prison system in the country scaled through second reading at plenary. Leading the debate on the Bill, Kalu stated that the prisons in Nigeria are unable to reform errant members of the society sent there for correction. He further stated that rather than being reformed and turning a new leaf, many offenders sent to the prisons turn out to become even more hardened. Kalu argued that it is known that obsolete legislation, a slow justice system and inadequate funding are prominent on the list of challenges bedevilling Nigerian prisons to reform locked-up inmates. He explained that the new Nigerian Correctional Service Act which repealed and replaced the Prisons Act and consequently changed the name from the Nigerian Prisons Service to the Nigerian Correctional Service reflects the need for the reform of the system. “The problem of prison congestion in the country is huge. For instance, the March 2019 edition of the Lagos State Criminal Information System revealed that though the five prisons in Lagos State have a combined holding capacity of 4,087, they were holding 9,044 inmates,” Kalu said. He recalled that the former Controller of Prisons in Lagos State, Tunde Ladipo, said the Badagry Prison, which was built to house only a little over 100 inmates, was at a time locking over 700 inmates. Furthermore, it is instructive to note that there are 240 prisons in Nigeria with an official capacity of 50,153 inmates but currently holding over 74,000 inmates. ”

The lawmaker pointed out that overcrowding of prisons is a serious challenge and an obstacle to the implementation of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as Mandela Rules) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. He said considering the Covid Protocols, especially regarding social distancing, one wonders how it would be applied in the correctional centers given the overcrowding it is currently experiencing. However, Kalu noted that concerns have been raised about the practicability of Section 12(8), which empowered the State Controller of Correctional Service to reject additional inmates when the facility under his watch is full. He said this particular provision is very unrealistic unless more prisons are built, considering our population as a country, and more particularly in urban areas like Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Aba, etc.

The lawmaker said the way forward is for more prisons to be built, adding that achieving the total reform of the reformatory institutions in the country would never be possible unless the nations take a deliberate and bold step towards building more reformatory centres and this can only be achieved by encouraging this federating unit to be part of the establishment and running of correctional facilities in their respective domains. “To achieve this, there is a need to move “Prisons” from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, so that both the federal government and the states can share the burden of funding and administering the prison, now correctional centres,” he added. “Once this is done, the federating units can cater for many of the inmates in prisons and correctional centres who committed or have been alleged to commit state offences and that of course will lessen the burden of the Federal Government. Making the States share in the responsibility of funding the prison would help to check indiscriminate imprisonment of people for minor offences created by state laws.” Kalu explained that the Bill which comprises three clauses primarily seeks to delete the word “Prison” as Item 48 on the Exclusive Legislative List, Part 1, Second Schedule to the Constitution and to provide for the establishment of Correctional Centers by the Federal and State Governments as new Item 31 on the Concurrent Legislative List, Part II, Second Schedule to the Constitution.

For many, these are only name changes. However, it also denotes a shift in policy and practice while also suggesting that states are an essential unit of analysis in understanding the far-reaching effects of imprisonment and the site of potential solutions. Policy change within institutions has to begin at the state level through the departments of corrections. Nigerian prisons have been enormously characterized by some problems, which several studies have indicated to be the reasons for the inadequacies of the system as a corrective institution. Studies have shown that contact with the prison institution in Nigeria makes less hardened individuals to be more hardened in criminal activities upon release, with more tendencies than not, to relapse into criminal activities, which generates a high frequency of recidivism. The penal institution’s subsystems; the justice, the police, the prison yard and the operatives’ ways of administering justice are believed to bring about breeding and enhancing criminal behaviour and recidivists than serving; deterrence, repentance, reformatory and reconciliatory attitudes between ex-convicts and people in a free society to enhance confidence in physical and conceptual security. Nigerian prisons have been identified as a veritable avenue for human resources wastage in society. There is idleness and wastage among the inmates, while old-time trade ideas and occupations vanish.

Where there are existing trade and skills acquisition centres within the prison yards, they are either not functioning or unsuitable for some of the inmates who may prefer other trades and educational learning processes that are non-existence in the rehabilitation of the prison curriculum. For instance, some inmates have demonstrated the ability and the desire to acquire higher academic qualifications while in prison in order to improve both their social status and meet up with their life educational ambitions which may not necessarily be related to the vocational trades in the prison yard. It is not an exaggeration to adduce that Nigerian The prison System is a home for idle minds due to a lack of what to do, a lack of workshop facilities and a lack of good skills, which the prisoners would like to learn. In relation to social infrastructure, there are no good recreational facilities and other amenities in most prisons in Nigeria, and Obioha in Sokoto and Ibadan prison yards respectively. The Nigerian prison environment with regard to amenities has been characterized as “uncheerful”, “dehumanising”, and “a hell” by Abubakar Rimi after his life experience as a political prisoner in Nigeria at the termination of the second republic. This lack of social amenities accounts for the culture of fragility and explosive social violence that is recurrent and descriptive of the Nigerian prison community over the years. Physical infrastructure and housing facilities could better be described as uncivilized. The rooms and cells are not good for human habitation, while the beddings are in most cases absent as many prison inmates in Nigeria sleep on the bare floor. Furthermore, in spite of the heinous cry by human rights organisations, most prison yards in Nigeria are overcrowded beyond the designed population. This manifests in most of the prisons holding more population of inmates than they were originally planned to accommodate, which in turn overstretches available infrastructure beyond their limits of function due to human pressure. It is a recurring administrative problem that had been identified in notable Nigerian prisons prior to colonial rule, as Lord Fredrick Lugard (1903) notes about the Kano prisons, “the Kano prisons in Nigeria prior to colonial rule were highly congested to the extent that inmates have trodden on one another”

This problem of congestion in Nigerian prisons is discovered to be the major cause of some killer diseases, such as air born infections. With the above problems in Nigerian prisons, it may be difficult for Nigerian society to have prisoners rehabilitated for better lives. The government has to make it clear, through financial and other necessary supports that the prison system has a responsibility to work on the inmates so that they can be useful to themselves and society in general upon their release. Except for the right tools and the right working atmosphere are provided, mere sloganeering will serve no useful purpose as all the goals for prison reforms will continue to remain a mirage. As summarized in Amnesty International, the “living conditions in the prisons are appalling. They are damaging to the physical and mental well-being of inmates and in many cases constitute clear threats to health. Conditions such as overcrowding, poor sanitation, lack of food and medicines and denial of contact with families and friends fall short of UN standards for the treatment of prisoners. The worst conditions constitute ill-treatment. In many Nigerian prisons, inmates sleep two to a bed or on the floor in filthy cells. Toilets are blocked and overflowing or simply non-existent and there is no running water. As a result, the disease is widespread. Most prisons have small clinics or sick bays which lack medicines, and

in many prisons, inmates have to pay for their own medicines. Guards frequently demand that inmates pay bribes for such “privileges” as visiting the hospital, receiving visitors, contacting their families and, in some cases, being allowed outside their cells at all. Prisoners with money may be even allowed mobile phones, whereas those without funds can be left languishing in their cells. One inmate said: “If you don’t have money if you come to prison, you will suffer. They collect money from you. It is not right.” These unpleasant conditions do not need to be over-emphasized, rather, they should be perceived as the signal posts for the need to overhaul the entire prison system. One of the important rationales for a total overhaul of the prison system in Nigeria is to reposition the system in order to perform its constitutional and expected roles in society, which are not yet met. These roles include; Reforming the prisoners to be better than what they were before privatization, Rehabilitating the prisoners in order to equip them with new skills or improve on their old ones, and secluding criminals from the rest of society, pending when they have atoned for their sins. On this, “imprisonment is a form of punishment to make the offender atone for his sins. It is assumed that the threat of putting an offender behind the bars could deter potential criminals and a convicted criminal who has lost his freedom to steer clear of antisocial behaviour that may send him back to jail.” A lot has been said and done on paper about the restructuring and repositioning of the prisons, yet it appears that little or nothing has been achieved in practical terms. The myriad of problems in the prison system in Nigeria requires urgent attention to avoid further human and material wastage in the prison system which would have been channelled to other productive sectors of the society and economy. An important observation which needs to be taken seriously in any reform process of the prisons is that the Nigerian prison system still remains within the traditional perception of the prison system as a passive actor in the chain of criminal justice administration, which needs to be changed. She emphasised that ‘traditionally, the prisons are made to play a passive role in the chain of criminal justice administration. It is made to act as the stomach that has to gulp and keep any food given to it. We advocated for a change in this regard. Even the stomach sometimes rejects food that is not conducive for it through constipation, diarrhoea, gas or other means.’ It is an understatement to allude that the Nigerian prison system is more punitive and dehumanizing than the supposed corrective assignment that it should be focused on in the present global dispensation and demands for the actualization of human rights in the prisons of member countries that are signatories to the international convention on human rights. Nigeria is a signatory to this convention and many other human rights prescriptive rules, such as UN Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners, which certainly oblige Nigeria to conform completely to these rules. Amnesty International (2008:5) pointed out the enormity of obligations that Nigeria should conform to in keeping with the functions of the prisons in the country. Nigeria’s human rights obligations extend to those who are in its prisons. Being deprived of one’s liberty does not mean forfeiting other human rights (Amnesty International 2008); (The UN Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners: Principle 5).8 For prisoners, as for everyone, the right to life and the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment must be respected at all times. Furthermore, Article 10(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states: “All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”

The rehabilitative approach has to ensure social tranquility and peace. It has been argued that this approach supports the internationally recognized humanitarian standard in handling offenders of the law, and to focus on reformation. The major reasonable purpose of prisons is to confine the unlawful, and aid in changing their behaviour. Prisons should work like hospitals where patients may be admitted for treatment and cure, and the attitude of jail officials is to be like physicians in the hospital.

In Nigeria, legislative lists provide for the division of powers - the exclusive legislative list, the concurrent legislative list and the residual legislative list. Section 4(1) of the Constitution provides that the legislative powers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are vested in the National Assembly for the Federation and section 4(6) vests the legislative powers of a state in the House of Assembly of that State. The Concurrent legislative list provides for items which the federal and state governments can legislate on. Items on this list include: The concurrent legislative list includes allocation of revenue; antiquities and monuments; archives; a collection of taxes; electoral law; electric power; exhibition of cinematography films; industrial, commercial, or agricultural development; scientific and technological research; statistics; trigonometrical, cadastral, and topographical surveys; universities; technological and post-primary education. The Supreme Court in A.G. Bendel State v A.G. Federation reaffirmed the doctrine of the division of governmental powers as the legislative power in a true federation, stating that it is implicit in the character of a federal constitution that neither the Federation nor the States can make laws imposing an extra burden on each other.