Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Kpotun-Idris, has recommended the establishment of special courts to try specifi c off ences for speedy adjudication of cases. He made the suggestion recently in Lagos during an address at the NBA Annual General Conference. Idris said the establishment of the court would not only expedite the trial of specifi c off ences like kidnapping, terrorism and armed robbery, but enable security agencies compute the country’s crime index. He said current statistics on crime and the rate of convictions in the country showed that it was the lowest compared with all the developed countries of the world, including China.
Idris, who admitted that the country’s current prison population was higher than its intake capacity by 18, 259 inmates, explained that either off enders in were either not adequately arrested or prosecuted or that those arrested by the Police still found their way out as a result of weak judicial process. “Nigeria, with a population of over 170 million and 244 prisons with an intake capacity of 50,000, has an inmate population of 68, 259. “If you have 68, 259 persons in prison custody out of a population of about 170 million people, it means that out of every 100, 000 persons you have about 40 persons in Prison in Nigeria,” he said.
He said the combined implication of the crime indices was that: “Nigeria has a lower prison intake than all the developed countries mentioned above. It therefore, means that either Nigeria has a lower crime index than United States of America, United Kingdom and China.” He, therefore, suggested the establishment if such specialised courts to enhance speedy trial of such cases. “It will, therefore, not be out of place to at this point recommend the establishment of special courts to try specifi c off ences like kidnapping, armed robbery and terrorism cases to ensure that those arrested by the police are speedily prosecuted after the completion of investigation.” Idris said businesses would only thrive under a political system that provided security of lives and property
