The Acting Controller-General of the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCS), Sylvester Nwakuche, has said that the number of prisoners waiting to be executed in Nigeria is now 3,688, a rise from 3,590 in September 2024.
He said that the increase represents a 2.73 percent or 98 prisoners within six months.
Speaking when the Senate Committee on Interior, chaired by Senator Adams Oshiomhole, was screening him for the position of substantive Comptroller General, he explained the major challenges facing the correctional service in the country, including the fact that majority of inmates are currently awaiting trials.
“That is the major headache we are trying to address on a daily basis.
“State governors are part of our challenges. They refuse to execute inmates on the death row, neither do they commute their death sentence to life imprisonment.
“If they commute death sentences to life imprisonment, it is easier for us to distribute them to rural correctional facilities, which are not as congested as those in urban correctional facilities.
“This is because the issue of congestion is a major urban phenomenon.
“Our correctional facilities in urban centres are more congested than those in rural areas.
“If we commute them to life sentencing, we will be able to distribute them equitably.”
The acting comptroller-general pledged to collaborate with other security agencies more strategically to ensure that the issues of awaiting trials are permanently resolved so that the prison can be decongested.
Nwakuche emphasised the need for collaboration and synergy, specifically with the Nigeria Police, EFCC, DSS and ICPC, among others to decisively address the challenge of awaiting trials in all the correctional facilities nationwide.
“This is very important for any establishment to forge ahead.
“An establishment like correctional centres cannot do anything without collaboration.
“We are the one at the recipient of the products of all the prosecuting agencies.”
According to Nwakuche, the Nigeria Police, EFCC, DSS, Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, and ICPC “will bring all these products to our doorpost.
“They are expected to turn around and push them into the society and be law-abiding citizens.
“If we must meet this expectation, we need to collaborate more meaningfully.”
He lamented that the dispensation of justice system “is very slow.
“When I met with the Inspector-General of Police, I said some of your inmates are in our facilities.
“They have stayed up to five or six years.
“Some of them are not needed to be in our facilities any longer.
“If they have been sentenced, some of them will not spend up to two to three years in prisons.
“But they have stayed in our facilities for six years.
“For me, such persons should be discharged and acquitted.
“That is one area we must collaborate to decongest our facilities.
“I also met the Director-General of the DSS on the need for collaboration.
“I met the Attorney-General of the Federation for the same reason.
“Some of the inmates are waiting for the advice of the Director of Public Prosecution.
“If we do not reach out to these agencies, our people will continue to be in prisons unnecessarily.”
In his remarks, Chairman, Senator Oshiomhole said that the committee would submit its report based on the performance of the Acting Controller-General of the Nigerian Correctional Service.
Nwakuche was accompanied to the screening at National Assembly by his Principal Staff Officer, Godwin Okosun; Deputy Controller of Corrections of NCoS, Babatunde Ogundare and Assistant Controller General of NCoS, Ahmed Adagiri, among others.
