A top official of Ikoyi Prisons says a substantial number of inmates have been sufficiently trained and certificated in various skills and are ready to be reintegrated into the society.
A Deputy Controller of Prisons at the facility, Julius Ezeugwu, made the assertion at the inauguration of Ikoyi Prisons Football Academy, “Football Stars Behind Bars”, on Saturday in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the prison is collaborating with the Sisters Cities Vocational/Rehabilitation Centre, an NGO and the Joseph Yobo Foundation in the project.
Ezeugwu said that such skills would ensure that they contributed their quota to the nation’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP).
He said that in spite of the large inmate population and the predominance of awaiting trial persons, Ikoyi Prisons had consistently functioned as a correctional institution for the rehabilitation of offenders.
According to him, this is in contrast to the erroneous impression of Nigerian Prisons as a mere warehouse for criminal elements or a dungeon.
“This is in realisation of the fact that the index of a good prisons system behoves that an individual (inmate) turns out to be better after a sentence of imprisonment than before incarceration.
“In addition to the humane containment of inmates under our charge, our human resource development encapsulated in the 3Rs of Reformation, Rehabilitation and Re-integration embraces these programmes,” he said.
He noted that the Ikoyi Prisons built in 1955 as one if the convict prisons in Lagos had a lock-up capacity of 800 inmates.
According to him, the “Open-Out’’ as at today stands at 2,303 inmates, with awaiting trial persons put at 1,963 and 340 inmates only as convicts.
The Ikoyi Prisons boss lauded the development partners of the football academy for their passion and investment in human resources development of the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS).
“I sincerely commend our development partners in this initiative because through this, they have directly or indirectly been part of the management team of the service.
“You are helping in no small measures in the realisation of our core mandate, which is reformation, rehabilitation and re-integration of persons under our charge,’’ Ezeugwu said.
He appealed to the partners to undertake to facilitate the legal services of the stars or talents they had discovered in the course of the football tournament with a view to signing them on in both local and international clubs.
Mrs Joy Nunieh, Director of the Sisters Cities Vocation /Rehabilitation Centre, said that the inmates deserved to be loved and given a second chance.
According to her, a lot of persons have negative impression about the prison as well as the inmates and that needed to be corrected urgently.
“Everyone must get interested in rehabilitation as one hardly knows if a friend or family member could be among the inmates.
“I maintain that rehabilitation is better than incarceration and that is why we all need to come together and give them the support and encouragement they need.
“We need to support them not because we are better than they are but because they deserve a second chance.
“Some of the people working out there freely could have been here if not that they could have exchanged that with bribe.
“We are happy doing what we are doing because we need to make them happy and make them feel that they are part of the larger society,’’ Nunieh said.
NAN reports that among the dignitaries that graced the event was a former Governor of Cross River, Donald Duke and his wife, Onari. (NAN)
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