Francis Enobore is the Public Relations Officer of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS). In this interview with BODE OLAGOKE, he revealed how some of the inmates suddenly make millions, buy houses, train their children in University while in custody. He bares his mind on other issues.
What effects has border closure had on some of your farms?
Well you know part of the take home in the partial border closure is to galvanize productive activities particularly in our agricultural sector. We have vocational training programs in the system (Prison service), talking about farm produce and processing the produce to other usable goods. Definitely the border closure will have positive impact in our system because we will now have better patronage for our products. We have farm centres where we produce large quantity of palm oil, rice, maize and other forms of grains, so definitely it will increase patronage.
Is your agency looking at mechanising your farms to accommodate this new trend?
Yes. When the present Comptroller General came on board one of the key areas he vowed to tackle was rejuvenating our farm centres across the country. And to start that process he identified three farm centres; we have one in Kujama in Kaduna state, the second is Lakushi in Plateau state and the third one Osala farm centre in Edo state. These farm centres were isolated to enable us go into large production of crops that are relevant to what we need first because he was looking at the possibility of generating the bulk of the food we use in feeding the inmates from our farms. The farm centre at Kujama has been dedicated to the production of maize; the one in Lakushi is dedicated to the production of rice while the third one in Edo state is dedicated to the production of palm oil. To hit the ground running he procured 22 tractors and their relevant implements that have been deployed to these farm centres to go into massive production in these areas that I have mentioned. As a matter of fact, production has started in earnest in these farms but because of distance we would have taken you to see things for yourself.
To what extent has these farms helped in the feeding of inmates in the various prisons compared to what it used to be?
To answer your question correctly if you look around the inmates that are working on our farms, you will agree with me that their look is different. The interest they deployed to the productive activities that they are engaged in shows that we are going to harvest a lot from this new trend. To start with, the feeding of our inmates as it is now, what we get from that is that we are sure of the source of the food stuffs we are going to use to feed them, they come readily available, we don’t have the challenge of logistics. So, the partnership and new trend is really yielding dividend.
The year is coming to an end and I know your agency isn’t revenue generating one but can you tell us how much you have generated from the little you get to the federation purse?
Yes I may not be able to put figure to that now because I don’t have the record readily at hand but the new trend that has brought the procurement of modern equipment to enhance productivity in the farm are yielding positive results. Like you know, the farm centres are not established essentially to generate revenue, the focus is to train the inmates and I tell you what we gain training the inmates in these vocation centres across the country. If I say you can quantify it I may be overstating the obvious but you and I know that for you to start to close the moral gaps in an adult offender whose character has been formed and almost outcast and succeeding in bring back to the part of the society that he can now derive pleasure from eating from his sweat. You would agree with me that a lot of effort would have been put into it and it means a lot to the social economic stability of the country, peace in the land, providing something for the inmate to fall back to when he leaves and many other gains.
What is the attitude of some of these inmates to this training?
They are very enthusiastic about it. They are willing to learn. We don’t really have problem in getting the inmate to learn, the problem we have which I feel I should repeat is lack of qualified inmate to be trained because we can’t train those that are awaiting trial and when you go to a facility and you hear that close to 87 to 88 percent of the inmates there are awaiting trial the question you ask yourself is that what kind of training can you properly deploy that would be meaningful in that situation?
So what is the current number of awaiting trial?
The awaiting trial put together across the country is about 52,000 out of close to the 76,000 inmates we have in the country.
I know you also have some borderless prisons across the country. Tell us the improvements that have taken place in these facilities?
The one you are talking about we call it custodian camps, it has no walls, it is almost similar to the one we have in some states. The inmates go there, those that committed offences outside sexual offences are taken to that place irrespective of the number of years. When they have served one quarter of the sentences in the various location of their primary detention; they are transferred to such locations based on recommendation of officers in charge of their primary locations. They are taken to those borderless environments to be given monitored freedom. Monitored freedom in the sense that they are not entirely free but to a very large extent you don’t see them go about with wardens by their side, they are given relative freedom to see how they can gradually transit to the society. Most of them have their families around, they rent houses for the wife, children, they pay their school fees and all that. Two years back when I was in Kaduna which is the place we have one of such locations you are talking about, of course we can recall we saw an inmate there from the record, he was making close to N2 million from the sales of vegetable from his garden. He confessed to us that he was training two of his children in the University and we have so many of them. There was someone from the east that left that place sometime ago; when he came there of course like every other inmate he had nothing but when he stayed there for several years when he was leaving he had already bought two buses and so many household properties. So, we are impacting on them. The only challenge we have and I wouldn’t stop saying it is the number of those that are awaiting trial.
In this outgoing year 2019, there were some attacks on your facilities across the country. Can you update us on some inmates who escaped?
No, we didn’t have any attack on any of our facilities in 2019. I think you are talking about the one of 2018 that happened in Minna. Yes, there was an external attack on our facility. The one in Kogi state wasn’t an attack; it was a natural disaster that affected the entire community and not just our custodian facility there. So, that incident happened and quite unfortunate some of the inmates escaped but efforts are on to recapture them and we are gradually doing that and publicity is been given to those that escaped and haven’t returned on their own and haven’t been recaptured. We have their biometrics and everything intact. In time we will get them.
