More than 1,000 people were arrested in the past two weeks and kept in jail over election offences, bringing the total number of prison inmates in Nigeria to 50,000, head of prison services said on Wednesday.
“By the end of last month, we have actually reached the 50,000 mark because of the election crisis… So, we had a lot of admissions in the last one or two weeks. We had over a thousand people behind bars as a result of that,” Comptroller General of Prisons, Olusola Ogundipe, told reporters.
He did not give details of where the suspects were arrested and the precise electoral offences they had committed.
A local rights group said more than 500 people were killed in deadly rioting that followed April 16 presidential elections across the country’s north, while the Red Cross said some 74,000 were displaced.
Ogundipe said there were 49,000 prison inmates, including 33,900 still awaiting trial as at the end of March.
“As of the end of March, we had in our custody 49,000 inmates comprising about 33,900 awaiting trial,” he said.
Local and international rights bodies have criticised Nigeria’s slow pace in dispensing justice.
Government efforts in the past years aimed at speedier trials and decongesting the country’s jails have not yielded desired results.
There are thousands of prison inmates who have remained on death row for more than 15 years.
May52011