In a bid to expose law students to the practical aspects of the law,
the caliphate law clinic, a law students’ organization in my
university went on an advocacy visit to the ministry of justice, the
high court, the office of the attorney general, the shariah court and
the prison headquarters.
I was in the kebbi state team. After visiting all the other places, our
last place of call was the illela prison.
We had been to the prison headquarters before the prison itself. We
met the prison controller, a very lively old man who gave us a brief
history about the prisons and mentioned the number of prisons
that were in kebbi state. Throughout his talk, he said two things
that stuck with me.
The first thing was ‘it is unfortunate that the only classification of
prisoners we have in Nigerian prisons in reality is ‘male’ and
‘female’. That is why you find a pick pocket and a murderer in the
same prison cell and before you know it, the pick pocket graduates
to a bigger crime once he leaves.
The second was, ‘we are in isolation here, and so many people do
not think a prison officer has so much worth. Everyone just calls
the prisoners inmates, inmates, but what do you call those you sit
in the same classroom with. You call them classmates; we are all
inmates, the officers and the prisoners because we stay here in
isolation together. They are our friends’.
As someone that reads a lot of Sidney Sheldon, john grisham and
James Hadley chase books, I had an image of what a prison was
like in mind.
It was a gruesome image so I thought I was ready for whatever the prison experience.
We got to the prison building and it had very tall walls like I
expected. We were asked to drop our gadgets before coming in. it
felt like de javu.
Little did I know the real deal was coming. We walked into the
green gate and it was locked after us.
We were shown two empty rooms that had dusty padlocks. They
were the consulting room in case a prisoner fell ill. I could only
wonder how long that place had been locked up. The sick bay
wasn’t any different. There were a number of beds and blue
curtains.
As you would guess, I wasn’t interested in all that. I was eagerly
waiting to meet ‘the guys’.
It is a medium security prison that had only male inmates. I tried
not to entertain bizarre images of what they may look like.
I had this image of huge guys with tattoos all over their arms and
clean shaven heads in orange colored uniforms. So I just imagined
same guys but in blue uniforms.
‘Huge’ is definitely a foreign word in that prison. As soon as we
stepped into the yard, I say a young boy running towards another
part of the yard in his blue uniform. He couldn’t have been more
than 20 years of years of age. I noticed how he and every other
person in the yard went about their various duties. Some of them
didn’t even spare us a glance. It was as if they had divorced
themselves from the world we live in. As for some others, they kept
staring. It was as though some aliens dropped on their planet.
The prison has a capacity of 250 prisoners, but they housed over
350 prisoners. Every Nigerian prison has the same congestion
story. We made our first stop in front of a place called cell A. I had
goose bumps standing there; staring at over 50 men all packed in
a dormitory. There were old men in their fifties, middle aged men
and young men. They all rushed forward, squatting as the head of
the prison warders introduced us to them. It was a humbling sight.
These men looked at us though we were saviors who had come to
bring them out of the dungeon they were in.
The most prominent face they wore was that of resignation. I
noticed a particular fair skinned boy who sat far away from others
and didn’t act like he cared that anyone was around. He had this
distant look in his eyes and I kept asking myself what landed this
handsome fellow here? Their dorm contained the few belongings
they had which was tied up in small bundles of clothes. Some of
them had very worn out foams to lay their heads on and some
others had mats and old blankets to place on the hard cement
floor when night falls. These are convicts who have been
sentenced. None of them was awaiting trial in that particular cell.
I kept thinking of how a lot of them would remain in that cell for
many more years to come. The smell that oozed from the toilet in
their cell is a story for another day. And yes, nobody was huge. As
a matter of fact, a number of them looked malnourished. Their
meal was a bowl of gruel. They ate with a kind of relish that forces
one to be grateful for what one had.
We moved on to the solitary cell where prisoners who committed
new offences while in detention were kept. There was only one guy
in the detention cell and he obviously didn’t care about what we
came to do. Every other cell wasn’t any different from the first one
we went to.
I asked the prison warden if they had any form of reformative
activity or if the prisoners learnt any skills.
He replied saying; some of them are tailors, others farmers and
some others laundry men. The best behaved among them work in
the kitchen. I kept thinking of what kind of reformation lies in
laundry. How does a criminal become better a better person by
doing people's laundry?
proceeds made from these services goes to the 'government's'
purse. What do these men fall back on if they ever get out of this
place.
A number of them were condemned convicts, they were only
awaiting execution date or if fate had a nice cake for them, they get
pardoned.
This short visit opened my eyes to a number of things we take for
granted. Our freedom being the most important. It would interest
you to know that some of these people locked behind bars are
innocent and because they haven't been tried yet, and since it is
the nigerian justice system, they are rotting behing bars even
before conviction.
I would leave you with the words of Jack Kerouac. “ In seeking to
severely penalize criminals, the society by putting the criminals
away behind safe walls actually provide them with the means of
greater strength for future atrocities glorious and otherwise."
Jameelah Yusuf is a 500 level law student of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto.
Comments
Post a Comment