The Federal Government has directed the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) to evacuate inmates from its Abeokuta facility within the next four weeks due to what it described as horrible sanitary conditions.

The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, Dr Magdalene Ajani, issued the order during the Independent Investigative Panel on Alleged Corruption and Other Violations Against the NCoS panel’s third public hearing in Abuja on Monday.

“We can’t put up the pictures of what we saw there, horrible. So, it’s an urgent thing that needs to be done,” Ajani said, stressing the immediate need for intervention.

Ajani further instructed the NCoS to submit a comprehensive status report on all juvenile custodial centres in the country within two weeks.

Expressing concern over the illegal detention of minors alongside adult inmates, she said: “When we visited about 28 states’ custodial centres, we found out that you don’t lump underage with adults. You are going to send to the ministry the status report of all the borstal centres that have been completed or not, requisited or not. We need to be serious with what we are doing.”

Ilorin Facility Under Scrutiny

The panel chairperson also flagged irregularities at the Ilorin custodial facility, which reportedly operates as a borstal or halfway home but houses individuals aged between 30 and 43 years.

“Whether it’s a borstal institute or a halfway home, it must be clearly defined. The situation where you have 30 to 43-year-olds in a booster home or halfway home is not acceptable, and a lot of transactions are going on,” she stated, ordering the immediate removal of all adults not meant to be in such facilities.

Panel Secretary, Uju Agomoh, outlined the scope of the panel’s mandate, noting it covers corruption, torture, cruel and degrading treatment of inmates, and systemic failures in correctional institutions.

“The panel will be poised to bring in a kind of report that will make Nigeria have the kind of Nigerian Correctional Service that we want to become,” Agomoh assured.

Naijaonpoint recalls that in September 2024, Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, suspended several officers at the Kirikiri Maximum and Minimum Custodial Centres in Lagos over alleged misconduct involving the preferential treatment of cross-dresser Idris Okuneye, popularly known as Bobrisky.

The minister subsequently set up the investigative panel now probing wide-ranging concerns within the NCoS, including administrative lapses and inmate welfare conditions.