As part of its effort to help prisoners and ex-convicts integrate into their environment, a non-governmental organisation, Christ The Healing Stream Initiative (CTHSI), has partnered the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) to help repentant ex-convicts through vocational and entrepreneurial programmes.
The NGO’s Chief Executive Officer, Mrs Oyenike Daramola, disclosed this at the Ado Ekiti Correctional Centre during an evangelism and empowerment programme for inmates, noting that the vocational and entrepreneurial trainings promised by NDE would help in making the ex-convicts economically self-sustaining after serving out their jail terms.
While lamented the congestion in the Ekiti State Correctional Centre, Daramola urged the state’s Attorney-General, Mr. Wale Fapohunda, to take legal and administrative steps to correct the anomaly.
She said decongesting the Correctional Centre became necessary to avert cases of outbreak of diseases, hardening of inmates’ hearts as well as checkmating inhuman treatments which are against United Nations Human Rights Charters.
According to her, “The capacity of this correctional centre is 324 and the population now is 530. This is congestion and we need to decongest it. Let those who are having civil cases be given community punishments rather than cramping them in correctional centres.
“Though we know that they have committed offences, they are Nigerians. They needed to be treated with respect and dignity because in actual fact, serving prison sentences is meant to mold one’s life.
“This is an era when COVID-19 pandemic has become an issue with alarming spikes all over the world. We have to be circumspect of what is happening in the correctional centres by ensuring that congestion is not allowed.
In her remarks, the Deputy Director, Ekiti NDE office, Mrs Folasade Ajiboye, promised to help CTHSI achieve the goal of rehabilitating the ex-convicts, adding that it would be free for all beneficiaries.
She said: “Those to be trained and empowered in partnership with this NGO will be exposed to welding, barbing, farming, hairdressing, and other entrepreneurial trainings that can make them productive, rather than being redundant.
“This programme is going to be cost-free and they are meant to boost the abilities of ex-convicts because correctional centres are expected to be rehabilitation centres.”
A Legal practitioner, Barr. Femi Alonge, maintained that some of those incarcerated in the correctional centres were suffering as a result of poor handling of their cases by the police and the office of the Attorney General of the state.
Alonge therefore called on the National Assembly to rework the constitution and specify the time advice must come from the office of the Attorney General on any case.
“As we speak, there is no law regulating that and this has caused a lot of delay in the trial of awaiting inmates and contributing to congestion in our correctional centres,” Alonge posited.
Good job, well done