NPS boss gives reasons for poor service

The Controller-General of the Nigerian Prisons Service, Ja’afaru Ahmed, has identified overcrowding, inadequate staffing, poor funding, inadequate logistic support and decaying infrastructure as the major challenges confronting the Service.
Ahmed said this on Thursday at the 1st Democracy Lecture series at the Faculty of Arts Lecture Theatre, University of Abuja, Gwagwalada, organised by the Department of History and Diplomatic studies of the institution.
He said that the enactment of the Nigerian Prisons and Correctional Service currently before the National Assembly is a way of overcoming these challenges.
He also said that adoption of the Administration of Criminal Justice by all State Governments, especially its provisions on speedy trials; use of alternatives to custodial sentence; use of plea Bargain and application of detention time limits were also ways to overcome these challenges.
Ahmed said: “In as much as imprisonment is required in many cases involving violent crimes, the use of non-custodial measures should be encouraged where the basic aims of sentencing, including retribution, deterrence, and reformation could also be accomplished without resort to imprisonment.”
According to him, non-custodial measure as a set of punitive measures designed to effect punishment of first offenders in minor crimes or other special categories of prisoners without bringing them into prison custody “will save the offender from the trauma of imprisonment.
He said: “And the informal socialisation processs that takes place among criminals in prison custody.”
He said it would as well provide them with an opportunity for genuine penitence, among others.
Ahmed also said that massive infrastructure upgrade, establishment of modern 3000 capacity prisons in each of the six geopolitical zones to reduce congestion, and sustained improvement in budgetary allocation to prisons were other ways to tackle the challenges facing the service.
He said that the Nigerian Prisons Service played strategic role in National Development especially in terms of crime prevention, crime control and national security.
Ahmed said: “This, we do, not only by keeping the inmates in safe, secure and humane custody, but most importantly through their reformation and rehabilitation with a view to ensuring that they do not return to crime upon discharge.
‘The Nigerian Prisons Service has fared much better under democratic governance than under military regimes as exemplified even by positive disposition of the present administration toward the prisons.”
The Head of the Department, Dr Philip Afaha, said the idea of the lecture came as one of the few strategies not only to reposition the department but also to make it more relevant and responsive to the Nigerian Project.
Afaha said one of the cardinal mandates of a university is to identify, interrogate and proffer solutions to critical national challenges.
He said: “As the 2019 general election draws near, our sense of history demands that a town-gown platform is desirable to engage the public of their role and expectations in the unfolding democratic process.
“The lecture is designed to engage and educate our teaming population on the challenges, expectations and their stakes in the unfolding democratic process.
‘The event will occur every quarter and prospective lecturers are required to navigate the topic and understand it.
“But such presentation should be nationalistic as well as add positive value to public discourse, especially as the country is moving toward the next elections.”