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Nigeria Crime and Punishment
Nigeria had a dual prison system for more than a half
century
until the consolidation of the federal and local prisons
in 1968.
The Nigerian Prison Service, a department of the Ministry
of
Internal Affairs, was headquartered in Lagos and headed by
a
director responsible for administering nearly 400
facilities,
including regular prisons, special penal institutions, and
lockups. All of these facilities since 1975 came under
federal
control. Each state had its own prison headquarters under
the
supervision of assistant directors of prisons, and the
prisons
themselves--depending on type, size, and inmate
population--were
variously under chief superintendents, superintendents, or
assistant superintendents.
In 1989 the prison staff was reported to be 18,000, an
apparent decrease from the 23,000 level in 1983. The
average
daily prison population in 1976 was nearly 26,000, a 25
percent
increase from 1975. Ten years later, Nigeria's prison
population
was about 54,000. Lagos State accounted for the largest
number,
about 6,400; Anambra, Borno, and Kaduna housed more than
4,000
each; and Kwara, Niger, and Ondo, with fewer than 1,000
each, had
the smallest inmate populations. By 1989 the prison
population
had increased to 58,000.
Prison admissions increased steadily from about 130,000
in
1980 to more than 206,000 in 1984. The most common
offenses were
theft, assault, traffic violations, and unlawful
possession,
which together accounted for 53 percent of prison
admissions
between 1982 and 1984. Thieves represented the largest
single
category of offenders, accounting for between 37 and 46
percent
of prison admissions between 1982 and 1984. Admissions to
prisons
in Kaduna, Lagos, Borno, Kano, Plateau, Gongola, and Benue
exceeded 10,000 in 1983. This figure did not reflect the
geographical distribution of crimes, however, because more
than
10,000 prisoners each were from Anambra, Benue, Borno,
Cross
River, Gongola, Imo, Kaduna, Kano, and Sokoto. People
between the
ages of twenty-six and fifty consistently constituted the
largest
category of prisoners, ranging between 53 and 78 percent
between
1980 and 1984. In 1984 Christians and Muslims accounted
for 45
and 37 percent of prison admissions, respectively, and
women for
almost 4 percent. In the same year, only 32 percent of
prisoners
admitted were convicted, whereas the rest were on remand
or
awaiting trial. Among those convicted, about three-fourths
served
terms of less than two years, while 59 percent were
first-time
offenders and 41 percent were recidivists. Foreigners
constituted
an unknown proportion; in 1989, for example, about 2,000
aliens
from other West African states were held in Kaduna's
federal
prisons for illegal emerald mining.
Although prison policy called for provision of legal,
religious, educational, vocational, and social welfare
services,
Nigeria's prison system, as in most Third World countries,
was
grossly inadequate. There was no systematic classification
of
prisoners, so that young and old, and suspects for minor
offenses--most of whom were pretrial detainees and
first-time
offenders incarcerated for extended periods and eventually
released upon acquittal--were intermixed with dangerous
and
deranged criminals or repeat offenders. Despite
ever-increasing
prison admissions and an inmate population more than
double the
prison system's capacity, after a development project
allocation
of N50 million in 1983, capital expenditures for prisons
between
1985 and 1988 ranged only between N3 million and N11.6
million.
Overall, by the late 1980s the overcrowding rate of the
prison
systems exceeded 200 percent, with 58,000 inmates housed
in
facilities designed to accommodate 28,000; in some prisons
it was
much worse. Although the government had announced a prison
construction program, little progress was evident and
conditions
were projected to worsen; by the year 2000, Nigeria's
prison
population was expected to be almost 700,000.
Apparently unable to deal with the prison crisis
systematically, the government resorted to periodic
amnesties to
reduce the inmate population, usually on the occasion of a
regime
anniversary or a national holiday. General Buhari freed
2,500
prisoners, including 144 political detainees, in early
l985; the
AFRC directed state governors to release old, sick,
underaged,
and handicapped prisoners on independence day in 1989; and
the
government granted general amnesty in 1990 to more than
5,000
inmates who had served three-fourths of their sentences,
been
jailed for minor offenses with terms that did not exceed
one
year, or who had served at least ten years of a life
sentence.
The criminal justice system was so backlogged that at
least
three-fifths of the country's prison population consisted
of
pretrial detainees rather than convicts. Reform and
rehabilitation programs were nominal, and the prisons were
aptly
dubbed "colleges for criminals" or "breeding grounds for
crime."
For example, in the late 1980s the majority of the 2,000
inmates
awaiting trial at Ikoyi spent nine years in detention for
minor
offenses which, on conviction, would have carried prison
terms of
less than two years. The egregious conditions at the
Kirikiri
maximum-security facility were highlighted when Chief
Ebenezer
Babatope's 1989 prison memoir, Inside Kirikiri, was
published. In mid-1990 the government was considering an
advisory
committee recommendation to separate detainees from
prisoners.
Most prisons had no toilet facilities, and cells lacked
water. Medical facilities were severely limited; food,
which
represented 80 percent of annual prison expenditures, was
inadequate, despite a prison agricultural program designed
to
produce local foodstuffs for the commercial market.
Malnutrition
and disease were therefore rampant. In March l990, the
minister
of justice said that the prisoners' feeding allowance had
been
increased from N1.5 to N5 and that health and other
problems were
being studied.
Mistreatment of inmates was common, abuse frequent, and
torture occasional. In May 1987 at Benin prison, armed
police
killed twenty-four inmates rioting over food supplies, and
in
1988 a "secret" ten-year-old detention camp on Ita Oko
Island,
off Lagos, was exposed and closed. Nearly 300 prisoners
died of
"natural causes" in 1984, and 79 committed suicide, a
dramatic
increase from the average of 12 suicides per year between
1980
and 1983. Ikoyi alone recorded more than 300 deaths in
1988, and
42 deaths in the first three months of 1989. In June 1989,
the
Civil Liberties Organisation filed suit on behalf of 1,000
detainees held without trial at Ikoyi, charging the
government
with mistreatment and urging that the 113-year-old prison
be
closed.
Data as of June 1991
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