The federal government has been charged to take urgent steps to salvage the nation’s prisons system, which is now run with services said to be below the least human standards.
Giving the charge in a statement issued to journalists in Warri, Delta state on Saturday, a human rights outfit; the Centre for the Vulnerable & the Underprivileged (CENTREP), said the prisons across the country have lost all the qualities of what the system should be, now mostly run like ‘concentration camps’.
In the statement signed by its Executive Director, Oghenejabor Ikimi, CENTREP also called for the immediate suspension of all ongoing military operations across the country, describing them as aberration in a civil society. Instead the organisation asked the federal government to replace the military with well equipped police force.
Citing the deplorable state of the Federal Prison, Warri, where a slave camp with facilities for 307 persons was converted to a prison institution, now housing close to 2000 inmates, with no improved provision, the organsation regretted the inhuman circumstances to which prisoners are now subjected to.
“We call on the Federal Government to renovate all the Federal Prisons across the nation to make them reformative centres as they have transformed gradually over the years from mere prisons to concentration camps reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps described in Hitler Mien Kamp.
“For instance the Federal Prison, Warri, which was renovated into a prison from a slave camp in the year 1907, meant for 307 inmates, now houses close to 2,000 inmates with zero facilities on ground. The feeding and welfare of inmates most of which are awaiting trial are below acceptable human conditions”, the statement said.
Calling for the immediate stoppage of ongoing military operations across the country, CENTREP said ““it is an aberration for the military to be engaged in the internal security of a nation. Internal security of our nation should be left for the police to deal with while the military should be saddled with wading off external aggression and the Boko Haram insurgents.
“The frustration in the South-East geopolitical region is understandable. No wonder the rumour in Abia and Enugu States that the military are spreading monkey pox with vaccines being administered in their medical exercises. We insist the military cannot and are not responsible for monkey pox attack,” CENTREP stated.