Poor State Of Nigerian Prisons (photos)

Is This How x-convicts get reformed?

Prison congestion: CJN asks
magistrates to liberalise bail
conditions
ABUJA — Worried by the rising
figures of awaiting trial inmates in
various prison facilities across the
federation, Chief Justice of Nigeria,
CJN, Justice Mahmud Mohammed,
has asked magistrates to stop
imposing stringent bail conditions
on accused persons involved in
minor offences.

Time for sports for the inmates
The CJN, who gave the directive
when the national executives of the
Magistrates Association of Nigeria,
led by its acting National President,
Chief Magistrate Victoria Isiguzo,
paid him and 15 other Justices of
the Supreme Court a courtesy visit
during the weekend, said some
magistrates were to be blamed for
the level of congestion in the
prisons.
He said it was regrettable that
minor offenders are sometimes
ordered to meet harsh and
untenable bail terms, even as he
stressed that the essence of bail is
not to punish an accused person
but to secure his attendance to
appear in court for trial.
Besides, the CJN noted that a large
number of persons are detained
without charge while others are
detained pending further
investigation.
He further decried that people are
sometimes detained on the basis of
a First Information Report, FIR,
which he said upon examination,
may operate as holding charge
while the prosecutor seeks more
evidence to back up his trial.
Mahmud described the practice as
unjust, noting that in most of the
cases, suspects who are yet to be
declared guilty by a competent
court, often find themselves
incarcerated.
He, therefore, called on magistrates
to stop indulging the police by
admitting to bail a suspect whose
case the police are not ready to
prosecute.
According to the CJN, “a corollary
to this is the imposition of such bail
terms which an accused has no
real hope of meeting. I wish to use
this medium to counsel
magistrates to judiciously and
carefully exercise their discretion to
remand and consider alternatives
to detention where possible, and to
set reasonable bail terms as
appropriate.”

- VANGUARD