The Federal Government has mandated the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) to evacuate all inmates from its Abeokuta facility within four weeks, citing appalling sanitary conditions discovered during recent inspections.
Dr. Magdalene Ajani, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, issued the directive during the third public hearing of the Independent Investigative Panel on Alleged Corruption and Other Violations Against the NCoS in Abuja on Monday.
Describing the conditions at the facility as shocking, Ajani emphasized the urgency of the situation. “We can’t put up the pictures of what we saw there, horrible. So, it’s an urgent thing that needs to be done,” she stated, highlighting the immediate need for intervention.
The permanent secretary also ordered NCoS to submit a comprehensive status report on all juvenile custodial centers nationwide within two weeks, expressing serious concern over the illegal practice of housing minors alongside adult inmates.
During visits to custodial centers across 28 states, officials discovered widespread violations of protocols regarding the separation of underage detainees from adult prisoners. “When we visited about 28 states’ custodial centres, we found out that you don’t lump underage with adults,” Ajani said, demanding immediate compliance with proper detention standards.
She instructed the NCoS to provide detailed information about all borstal centers, including their completion status and requisition needs, stressing the importance of treating juvenile detention seriously.
The panel also identified significant irregularities at the Ilorin custodial facility, which operates as a borstal or halfway home but inappropriately houses individuals aged between 30 and 43 years. Ajani ordered the immediate removal of all adults who should not be in such facilities, noting concerns about unauthorized activities occurring within the institution.
“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 declared.
Panel Secretary Uju Agomoh outlined the investigation’s broad mandate, which encompasses corruption, torture, cruel and degrading treatment of inmates, and systemic failures within correctional institutions. She expressed confidence that the panel’s findings would help transform Nigeria’s correctional system.
“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 stakeholders.
The current investigation stems from controversies that erupted in September 2024, when Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo suspended several officers at Lagos’s Kirikiri Maximum and Minimum Custodial Centres over alleged misconduct involving preferential treatment of cross-dresser Idris Okuneye, known as Bobrisky.
The minister subsequently established the investigative panel to examine wide-ranging issues within the NCoS, including administrative failures and inadequate inmate welfare conditions across the country’s correctional facilities.
