Prisoners’ Rehabilitation & Welfare Action (PRAWA) Steps up Media Engagement in Lagos
As part of its longstanding efforts to improve the conditions of inmates in Nigeria’s various penal institutions and to drive the reform of the country’s criminal justice system, the leadership, personnel and partners of the Prisoners’ Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), in conjunction with the Penal Reform Media Network (PERMNET) recently engaged elite members of the Nigerian media community at a briefing in Lagos.
Held at the R&A City Hotel in Ikeja, the Lagos State capital, the briefing, which convened to assess progress made since its last gathering of this kind earlier in 2017, and to examine a number of outstanding issues, had a multi-pronged set of objectives – key among which are the urgent imperative of decongesting Nigeria’s grossly over-crowded prisons (especially the prompt disposal of cases involving prisoners awaiting trial); the need for a better framework for penal reform in Nigeria; the need to end the practice of mixing up inmates in the same facilities or cells, regardless of the nature of their offenses; the challenge of rehabilitating and reintegrating released prisoners back into society (and its potential impact on said society); and managing the cost – to the public, to the individual families of inmates, and to the prison system – of imprisonment, among others.
NEWSWIRE‘s Lagos correspondent reports that PRAWA’s initiative, which is driven by a quartet of partners including the United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Nigeria’s Legal Aid Council, is targeted, in the first instance, at 3 prison locations: Lagos, Enugu and Kano.
In his welcoming remarks, the Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Prisons Service (NPS), Francis Enobore, a Deputy Controller of Prisons, who represented the Controller, Jaafaru Ahmed, dwelt at length on the underlying reasons behind the vexed issue of over-crowding, as well as the preponderance of condemned criminals (at an estimated 2,252) and the reluctance of the political authorities to facilitate disposal of their cases – either through their execution or release. He called for a more robust engagement between the NPS and the media in a bid to bring about a better understanding of the issues on the part of all relevant stakeholders.
While admitting that the issue of penal and justice reform in Nigeria ‘doesn’t win votes’ among members of the nation’s political class, the Executive Director of PRAWA, Dr. Uju Agomoh, PhD, expressed confidence that even in the face of executive and legislative apathy, the media could in tip the balance in favour of public action, given its power to influence a proactive agenda on the part of both of policymakers and the populace as whole, and the electorate in particular, including the possibility for legislative advocacy. She walked attendees at the briefing through the July to October 2017 edition of the organization’s Fact Sheet, a periodic publication which details the data and statistics behind the nation’s prison walls, and the conditions of detainees at various locations – even as she admitted a yawning disconnect between the existence of said Fact Sheet and actual media reportage of the facts and issues it highlights, such as stalled cases, the role of the police (especially its Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS), and the traffic of suspects, etc.
In addition to its current administrative personnel, Dr. Agomoh disclosed, PRAWA also uses the services of paralegals and pro-bono lawyers who engage various prison authorities and ministries of justice on a regular basis. She also disclosed plans by PRAWA and its partners to incentivize excellence in media reporting of the issues, i.e. instituting special awards to journalists to carry out research- and evidence-based reporting on the issues, as well as promoting the dying culture of investigative journalism as a whole.
In the respective responses to Dr. Agomoh’s and DCP Enobore’s remarks, the assembled journalists voiced their concerns and observations as they pertain to the following areas: the need to gain access to factual information without the usual impediments and secrecy surrounding official activities in Nigeria, as has been the situation over the years – a turnaround which would, in turn, enable a closer look at the true plight of vulnerable groups such as women (especially pregnant inmates and nursing mothers), children, and people with physical and mental disabilities. This is even more imperative, in the view of some of the participants, as the focus on women prisoners also plays into the larger issue of gender equity in the larger society. On the issue of minors (young people aged below 16 years), they called for a review of laws governing the disposal of cases involving minors accused or convicted of capital offences, and a renewed public and private-sector investment into juvenile centers and remand homes across the nation (especially in the South-East geo-political region, where none exists at present.) They also called for a more prominent role for experts in psychology, psychiatry and mental-health issues, as well as counselors, in a bid to prevent recidivism and a subsequent return to prison on the part of released prisoners.
The briefing, which also heard presentations from facilitators such as Yushau Shuaib of PR Nigeria and Emeka Nwadioke, Esq. of City Lawyer Magazine, also featured a number of group discussions to review media (print, electronic and social media) approaches towards enhancing the work of PRAWA, as well as a planning session on ways of evolving an effective mechanism capable of driving legislative advocacy in favour of prison and justice sector reform.
The media engagement also saw the participants undertake a fact-finding visit to the Ikoyi Prisons on Lagos Island to assess the conditions there, and the effectiveness of its skill-acquisition and other rehabilitation programmes of the facility and other related institutions in Lagos State. A high point of the visit was the award of a special prize to Dr. Agomoh, the Executive Director of PRAWA, in recognition of her dogged and longstanding commitment to prison and justice reform in Nigeria, Africa and the world at large.
The 2-day programme ended with a banquet at the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON) Center, Onikan, Lagos.
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