FIJ
On Thursday, a report detailed how lawyers in Lagos State were lamenting that warders at prison facilities in the state were rejecting inmates.
The problem, the lawyers claimed, was that the prisons were full, and there was no room for new suspects.
Even bigger was the problem of an October 18, 2023 circular Joy Ugbomoiko, a chief magistrate, signed. According to this circular, “No magistrate shall order any police to detain a defendant at the station.”
With both realities, if the police cannot hold suspects longer than the 24-hour constitutional period and the prisons won’t absorb them, it begs the question of where suspects would be held pending the fulfilment of bail conditions or trial.
To establish the facts of the matter, FIJ contacted an insider in the Kirikiri correctional facility in Lagos.
This insider corroborated the claims in the report, and said the rejection of new inmates had been in place for over a week.
They said, “The prison is too congested so they are rejecting new inmates, and you know the federal government has said each state should handle the feeding of the state prisons.
“It’s from the court they are rejecting the inmates, because before any new inmate can be admitted here, the suspect must have been taken to court and the magistrate would then order for the suspect to be remanded in prison.”
We went further to interview Rotimi Oladokun, the Correctional Service Public Relations Officer, Lagos Command.
In a telephone interview, Oladokun told FIJ that the prisons were rejecting inmates because they were congested, and there was no room for more.
