By Bode Olagoke
Abuja
The federal government has ordered investigation into the reported inmate’s riots at Oke Kura Prison, Ilorin, Kwara state, on November 17, 2016, which led to death of six inmates in the condemned prisoners’ cell while many others sustained injuries.
Minister of Interior, Lt.-Gen. Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau (retd), has directed an Intra-Ministerial Committee to work closely with Nigeria Prisons’ management team with a view to unravelling the remote circumstance surrounding the most unfortunate incident and how to avoid a repeat of such in any of the nation’s penitentiary and to sanction any official found culpable.
A statement issued yesterday in Abuja by the Press Secretary to the Minister, Osaigbovo Ehisienmen, said Dambazau had consistently maintained his stance on the need to adhere to the United Nations Minimum Standards for the Treatments and Rehabilitation of Prison Inmates, including condemned prisoners in line with the Mandela rules.
“Findings overtime have shown that such riot involving condemned criminals has been as a result of frustration of being on death row for a period of 10yrs or more. Moreover, a Prison that was built in 1914, with 121 inmates’ capacity now accommodating 417, is bound to create difficulties in management.”
While reassuring his resolve to retooling the country’s Prison Service to effectively play its pivotal role of reforming, rehabilitating, reintegrating and transformed inmates back to the society in this connection, he added that the rights of prisoners should be well protected.
The statement, therefore, assured that government has embarked on reconstructing old Prisons while also building new Prison facilities in some locations across the country.
