A team of Amnesty International officials currently on an inspection of some Nigerian prisons across the country has declared them not good enough for healthy living on account of their deplorable facilities.
However, there are expectations that the nation�s efforts to improve on the conditions of the prisons might receive a boost if the organization fulfils its promise to attract international assistance to the sector.
Moved by the poor state of facilities in the various prisons visited, the organization said it would make recommendations to world bodies, organizations, individuals and even the Federal Government with the aim of improving on the facilities so as to make them habitable for inmates.
Amnesty International Director of Policy, Mr. Michael Bochenk, who revealed the findings of the team after inspecting the Enugu Prisons, said that poor facilities and over-crowding were the major problems confronting prisons in the country, stressing that they constitute health hazards to the inmates.
He stated that in all the prisons visited in Lagos, Abuja and Enugu, they discovered that the problem was created by the large number those awaiting trial whose cases are yet to be tried, while the offenders are kept behind bars for a long time even beyond the terms they would have served upon conviction.
He said, �Overcrowding is the major problem. The condition of the inmates is very severe. They are uncared for and a great number of facilities that are more than the designed capacity are existing in them. In any case the present condition is clearly inhuman for any person to be haboured�.
Bochenk, who led the team, stated that over 90 percent of the inmates in the prisons visited were discovered to be awaiting trial list, stressing that most of the inmates had spent between three and ten years waiting for their matters to be tried.
�It is really unfortunate, but we will be making a strong case to the federal government over this development, because the prison system is supposed to be a rehabilitation centre and not where one gets into and end up risking his life�, he added.
He said that the Agency would also look at the justice system of the country with a to ascertaining whether there was need to review them for effective services to curtail the delays in trying matters.
The team which later visited the Federal Neurophyschiatric Hospital, Enugu, which is currently handling cases of 30 civil lunatics brought from Enugu Prisons, expressed joy that the inmates were doing very well following adequate attention being given by the hospital.
They urged Nigerians to always take their mentally sick relations to the hospitals for treatment, rather than taking them to the prisons where they are abandoned apparently to die in the asylum.
Conducting the team round the hospital, the Chief Medical Director, Dr. Augustine Agumuo, recalled that the 30 civil lunatics were picked few weeks ago from the Enugu prisons after they were granted amnesty by the Chief Judge of the state. The inmates, which includes 25 males and five females, according to the Agomuo, were responding to treatment and would be released to their relations in few weeks time.
The Chief Medical Director, added that the hospital would go back to Enugu Prisons and pick the last batch of the civil lunatics, while asking for greater attention to mentally derailed persons in the society.
On how the Hospital would benefit from the visit of the Amnesty International, Agomuo said, they could pressure government into paying greater attention to persons with mental disorder as well as increase facilities at the Neropsychiatric hospitals in the country.