Going
to prison in Nigeria is another version of the daily struggle between
the rich and the poor. With money, prison inmates are living as much
enjoyable life as they can afford within the walls of incarceration. The revolting pictures of Nigerian prison cells on the internet and
in newspapers are enough to give anyone visiting a jail house in the
country a panic attack.
But amidst these dingy, damp and dimly lit rooms in prisons,
overcrowded with the damned, deceased and dying from all over the
country, there are cells reserved for some affluent inmates who live out
their terms in happiness and merriment.
Over the years, overcrowding in Nigerian prisons has been a
recurrent topic of discussion due to the large number of awaiting trial
inmates in the system.
According to the Nigeria Prisons Service, 69 per cent of the
current prison population is awaiting trial inmates as of February 12,
2018.
But in the face of this, the Federal Government has continued to
ignore the stakeholders’ advice on the needed expansion of the existing
prisons.
Despite this problem, affluent inmates do not have to worry about space.
While life is a daily tussle between the rich and poor in Nigeria,
going to prison is another version of that struggle. With money,
Saturday PUNCH learnt that inmates can live as much enjoyable life as
they can afford within the walls of incarceration.
Some ex-inmates, who share their experiences, speak of “apartments”
in the prisons where inmates live like they are in their homes with all
the privileges attached.
These privileges, it was learnt, don’t just land on the laps of
inmates. It is how officials make money on the side, while inmates
without the financial muscle, rub shoulders in squalor.
In the Kirikiri Maximum Prison in Lagos for instance, it was learnt
that inmates who have the money, pay anything between N70,000 and
N300,000 to live in the VIP section.
An ex-inmate who has now become a prison reform advocate, Mr.
Gwamnishu Harrison, shares his own experience across three prisons in
the country, confirming our findings.
He says, “At the Maximum Prison, the VIP units are called
‘apartments’ rather than ‘cells’. Inmates live in self-contained rooms
with personal access to shower, toilet, television and even generators.
“The amount you pay to live in the VIP section depends on how
big your case is. If for instance, you were in prison because of a fraud
involving a lot of money, they call you ‘big fish’ at the Kirikiri
Maximum Prison. You would have to pay higher than others to get a
special cell. The higher the amount of money involved in your case, the
higher the money you pay to officials.
“Once the court pronounces that you have been remanded, the
prison warders sit you down to tell you the situation you would meet at
the prison. They would threaten you subtly that you would be put in the
general cells, where inmates could beat you regularly but that if you
were in the VIP cells, nobody would be able to touch you.”
At the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, inmates in the VIP section even get personal guards, it was learnt.
These guards are other less-privileged inmates, who have the “luck”
of being chosen to serve the VIP inmates, with promise of some
privileges.
“Once you get a space in the apartment, you are given other
inmates, who are less privileged as ‘guards’. They protect you, clean
your room and wash your clothes. No one can go into the apartments
without informing the ‘guards’ working there. You take permission from
them before you go in to see the VIPs,” Harrison says.
At the Kirikiri Medium Prison’s VIP section – C Ward and K Ward – the situation is not so different.
Here, a newly built two-storey building is used as the VIP section.
Another block said to have been built by former Abia State
Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu, called Abia Hall is reserved for lower-class
VIPs – those who are rich but not as rich as people in C and K Wards.
Here also, an inmate, who pays between N50,000 and N150,000 enjoys
the privilege of a personal room and toilet with shower and fan.
Where an inmate does not pay enough, he shares a room with another ‘VIP’, Harrison says.
He was at the Kirikiri Medium Prison shortly before his transfer to the Ikoyi Prison, Lagos.
According to him, one of the most important privileges of being an
inmate residing in the VIP sections is the access to mobile phones.
“They pay a lot of money to warders to be able to use their own
smart phones. Are you not surprised that there are sometimes reports of
inmates defrauding people even while still in prison?” he says.
In May 2017, an Ikeja High Court in Lagos State sentenced a
prisoner Ikechukwu Ogbu, to 18 years imprisonment for defrauding a
banker, Patrick Edetchukwu, of a sum of N12.3m while serving a 10-year
sentence for an undisclosed crime at Kirikiri Maximum Prison.
In October 2017, an inmate of the Kuje Prison, Ifeanyi Ezenwa, was accused of operating a fake bank alert fraud while in jail.
The police alleged that he defrauded an orthopaedic medical store
of two wheel chairs and N50,000 and also scammed Elizade Motors into
handing over a vehicle, which his accomplice, 43-year-old Dalhatu
Yahaya, sold for N9m.
The VIP privileges enjoyed by inmates are not limited to the Kirikiri prisons.
At the Ikoyi Prison, there is a cell block called Booster, which
one of our correspondents learnt was originally meant to house underage
inmates.
Today, the block is used by VIP inmates and foreigners who have enough money to spend.
Harrison says, “It is like a flat. It even has its own fence and
gate. It is separated from the main yard. Each room is self-contained
and has flowers around it. All the inmates there use phones.
“Most of them use DVD players. They don’t eat the regular
prison food. Their food are prepared by the inmates who serve them as
servants, they give money to those servants to get foodstuff. With the
help of prison officials, they buy frozen chicken, turkey and other
things easily.”
In prisons, money is the key to many privileges.
It was learnt that most of the less-privileged inmates make money
in the prison by exchanging recharge cards supplied by their families
outside with money from the VIP inmates.
For instance, when a lower class inmate sells a N1,500 card to a VIP inmate, he gets N1,000 in return.
At the Ogwashi-Uku Prison in Delta State, the VIP section is called
Cell 6, a block of 13 rooms where an inmate enjoys the luxury of having
a room to himself.
Harrison, who served out his term at the prison, says that once in a
while, when there are more VIPs than rooms at the VIP section, two
inmates might share a room.
But unlike Ikoyi and the Kirikiri prisons, here, inmates at the VIP section actually pay monthly rent.
“You have to pay between N60,000 and N100,000 to get a room in
Cell 6. Every month, each inmate pays N4,000 monthly as a sort of rent
even though they don’t call it that,” he says.
An ex-inmate of the Kirikiri Female Prison, identified simply as
Ijeoma for anonymity, also tells Saturday PUNCH that there is also a VIP
section at the female wing.
According to her, she left the prison in 2011 and at the time,
inmates were paying between N20,000 and N40,000 to stay in the VIP
section.
“We called it the B-Line or B-Cell. While other cells contained
50 inmates only four inmates shared a cell in the VIP section. Many of
the inmates there also used mobile phones,” she says.
Corrupt privileged cells make money for officials – Giwa-Amu
Prison reform advocate and Lagos lawyer, Chief Gabriel Giwa-Amu,
says he came to learn about how corrupt officials create privileged
sections in the prisons over the years through his work.
But according to him, it is not in all cases that privileged
inmates are separated from the general population due to corruption.
He says, “Some privileged inmates are separated because of
their ailments. Some of them suffer from tuberculosis and other
contagious diseases.
“But in many cases, corruption is in play. We have a place
called Aso Rock at the Kirikiri Prisons, which was originally built by
the British Council as a donation to the Nigeria Prison Service. The
facility is so well-maintained with many amenities that officials now
use it as an opportunity to make money.
“Depending on how much you can afford, you are not kept among
the general prisoners. This is a system that has been going on for a
long time. There is also a corrupt system in the prison where those who
are committed are given medical certificates and are not kept in the
prison yard but in the military hospital.”
Giwa-Amu confirms that indeed a cell block which used to be a
juvenile unit has been converted to housing affluent inmates at the
Ikoyi Prison.
“The juvenile unit called Buster does not exist at Ikoyi Prison
anymore. It was abolished and moved to Abeokuta or Oregun Juvenile
centres. The existing facility is what is now being used as cell for the
privileged. But the juvenile unit still exists in Badagry Prison,” he says.
The activist tells Saturday PUNCH that the solution lies in
decongesting the prisons. To make this possible, he suggests three ways:
courts releasing offenders on personal recognisance; prisons exercising
rights of refusal and expansion of prison facilities.
Giwa Amu says, “Courts should be able to release some people on
personal recognisance rather than giving out strict bail conditions
they would never be able to meet. Some courts remand pregnant women or
someone with a disability when they know that the prisons are not
equipped to take care of such people.
“Ikoyi Prison for instance should be able to turn back inmates
when it knows that its facility cannot accommodate more than 1,000
people. I found out in my work with the prisons that the more inmates
they have in their facilities, the more allowances they get from Abuja.
“There is a need to overhaul the Nigerian prison system because
the society is dynamic. There is need to relocate some prisons like the
Ikoyi Prison to places like Ibeju Lekki where the inmates can farm and
grow what they eat.”
When a reporter contacted the spokesperson for the Nigeria Prison
Service, Mr. Francis Enabore, to confirm whether the privileges are
sanctioned by the prison high command, he said segregating some
prisoners, especially the high profile ones, from others was to minimise
risk of attack and a way of keeping them safe. However, he said no
inmate live like a king.
He said, “When an inmate is brought into the prison, we profile
them to know the appropriate cell to put them. If you keep
ex-governors, bank executives and high profile persons with armed
robbers, street urchins and rapists, we all can predict what would
happen to the man before the next morning. They would tear them into
pieces.
“Rightly or wrongly, these other class of prisoners have that
grudge against the well-off persons in the society, because they think
they are part of the problem in the society.
“If we keep them together, you journalists would be the first
to ask questions. That is why we segregate them because our mandate is
to keep in safe custody anybody sent to prison. So, when people say we
have special cells where people live like kings, I’m surprised, and no
once can live like king in the prison.”
He also explained that the issue of prisoners serving some others was voluntary and a reflection of what obtains in the society.
“People are wont to voluntarily be of service to the well-off people in
the society and prison is a microcosm of the entire society. So, our
communal way of living is what plays out there.”
Enobore noted that inmates were not allowed to bring in things like
television but that some cells, which he called association cells, have
television sets, usually “donated by religious organisations.”
He, however, admitted that some inmates connive with some
“unscrupulous” prison officials to smuggle certain prohibited items into
the cells, but that this informed why regular search was being carried
out.
Culled from: PUNCH.
0 comments:
Post a Comment