‘74% of prison inmates un-convicted’
About 35,000 (representing about 74 per cent) of the over 48,000 inmates languishing in Nigerian prisoners are un-convicted while majority had spent years in jail before their trial commenced, a rights group has said.
The Legal Officer, African Program of Open Society Justice Initiative Professor Chidi Odinkalu made the remarks yesterday at a press conference organized by the Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre (REPLACE) in Abuja.
I wonder if these statistics are true. I do not trust the government's numbers, but I am just as dubious of numbers introduced by NGOs and multilateral agencies. It is quite unfortunate because accurate statistics are vital for economic planning.
It would not be so bad if the government were using real statistics in its internal planning while feeding we the people rosy-but-fake statistics. Unfortunately, I fear our government deceives itself every bit as much as it deceives us.
As for the NGOs and multilateral agencies, lets just say that I am continuously amazed at their ability to project population (and health, education, etc) figures for Nigeria when we have never had a fully credible census at any point in our history.
Nonetheless, this NGO, the Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre, makes a very important point. It doesn't matter if the "real" percentage is 74 or 54 or 94, the truth is the majority of citizens languishing in our prisons have not been convicted of anything. And many of them, who might actually be innocent, end up serving more time awaiting trial than they would have been sentenced to if they had been found guilty.
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