President Muhammadu Buhari has signed the Nigerian Prison Service bill passed by the 8th National Assembly that changes the name of Nigeria Prison Service to Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS).
Under the new law, the Nigeria Prison system will now operate as a correctional organization, a development viewed as part of his administration’s effort at reforming the prison system in the country.
The new law now commutes death sentence not executed after 10 years to life imprisonments
The signing of the law came two months after the expiration of the eight National Assembly thereby raising concerns as to the legality of the law and if the Clerk of the National Assembly has such right to withhold bills and transmit them to the president months after the end of an Assembly.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly (Senate Matter), Senator Ita Enang while briefing State House Correspondents on Wednesday stated that the bill was transmitted to the President while the bill was signed in August.
Enang said that the essence of the bill was to keep the inmates in human conditions within the carrying capacity of the prisons.
According to him, this Act repeals the Prisons Acts and changes the name from Nigeria Prisons Service to Nigerian Correctional Service, otherwise known as “the Correctional Service.”
The Correctional Service is now made up of two main faculties: “Custodial Service and Non-custodial Service.”
The Custodial Service, according to him, “is to take custody and control of persons legally interned in safe, secure and humane conditions; conveying remand persons to and from courts in motorized formations; identifying the existence and causes of anti-social behaviours of inmates; conducting risk and needs assessment aimed at developing appropriate correctional treatment methods for reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration.”
Others include: implementing reformation and rehabilitation programmes to enhance the reintegration of inmates back into society; initiating behavior modification in inmates through the provision of medical, psychological, spiritual and counselling services for all offenders including violent extremists; empowering inmates through the deployment of educational and vocational skills training programmes, and facilitating incentives and income generation through Custodial Centres, farms and industries; administering borstal and related institutions; Providing support to facilitate the speedy disposal of cases of persons awaiting trial, and It further provides in Section 12 (2) (c).
Enang explained that where an inmate is sentenced to death has exhausted all legal procedures for appeal and a period of 10 years has elapsed without execution of the sentence, the Chief Judge may commute the sentence of death to life imprisonment. And Section 12 (8) empowers the state Controller of the Service to reject more intakes of inmates where it is apparent that the correctional centre in question is filled to capacity.
He further explained that “the non-custodial faculty of the Correctional Service is responsible for the administration of non-custodial measures, namely: Community Service, probation, parole, restorative justice measures and such other measures as a court of competent jurisdiction may order. “Restorative Justice measure approved in the Act include victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, community mediation and other conciliatory measures as may be deemed necessary pre-trial, trial during imprisonment or even post- imprisonment stages.”
When asked how long should the president further assent to bills passed by the eight assembly which was discovered on June 8, 2019, he said, ”When a bill is passed it goes through a process National Assembly management, particularly the legal department of the office of the Clerk to National Assembly.
“The time of Mr. President begins to run from the date that the bills are transmitted to him. The time doesn’t begin to run from the dates the bills were passed. It is 30 days from the date when the bill was transmitted to him. This bill was transmitted to him on July 20th and was assented to in August 14th, so Mr. President signed within the 30 days period.”
He explained that bills are passed by the legislature, there are still other processes of assembling which the Clerk of the assembly undertakes before he forwards to us. I believe these are one of the few bills remaining, I won’t say another will not come.
Asked on the guarantee the prisoner will get what is due to him, Anang said:
“Because the law has stated that the money will be divided into three places, the person who produces will take one third, the prisoner will take one third and the last one third will go to consolidated revenue fund of the federation.
On database, he explained that “The thing is when you enter, your particulars are registered in the prison system. The database cannot be faulted because it has your fingerprints and your other particulars.”
”The essence of the bill is to ensure there is enough funding for the service that will take care of the welfare of the inmates and workers. So any alleged corrupt practices in terms of ration will be eliminated.
”The Act also provides that the service retains a percentage of what they generate in addition to budgetary provision to work with, so corrupt practices will be eliminated.
”The question of overcrowding has been addressed by the Act. The correctional service officer is to notify the authorities in the state or the Federal capital, the attorney general, the chief judge of the state that there is an overcrowding in the prison and he is not to take in any other inmate.
The essence of notification is to ensure that if there are persons that are to have expeditious trial or if they are awaiting trial inmates due to laxity of the magistrate or overcrowding of the magistrate court, they can send an emergency team to decongest the prison by way trails of persons awaiting trial or transfer awaiting intimate to correctional facilities.”
Meanwhile, the President also signed into law Federal Universities of Agriculture (Amendment No.2) Act, 2019, changing the name of the Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi in Benue State to Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi.
The House of Representatives had in 2016 passed a bill seeking the renaming of the university to J.S Tarka.
Joseph Sarwuan Tarka (1932-1980) was a Nigerian politician from Benue State and a former Minister for Transport and later Communications under the administration of Yakubu Gowon.
He was one of the founding members of the United Middle Belt Congress, a political organization dedicated to advocating autonomy for the country’s Middle Belt.
Tarka was a battle scared politician who underwent several political battles, he was also known as a skilled politician and for the energetic political campaigns he conducted. He was sometimes called the smiling snake for the big smiles he had while speaking.
Tony Ailemen, Abuja
