Over 68,000 inmates face starvation over N5.6bn debt to contractors

By Omeiza Ajayi

ABUJA—Nigeria’s prison inmates now face the threat of starvation, following government’s inability to settle outstanding contractual obligation of over N5.6 billion to ration and gas suppliers.

As at March 6, 2017, Nigeria’s total inmate population stood at 68,259, with 46,351 awaiting trial, and 21,903 convicted.

In January 2015, Federal Government raised feeding allowance for prison inmates from N200 to N300 per prisoner per day, excluding allowance for gas which is N150 per inmate per day.

The total provision for feeding prisoners in Nigeria is N450 per prisoner per day.

However, while some contractors were reportedly paid for January and February 2015, payments from March to December, 2015, and the entire 2016 are still outstanding.

Reacting to the development, a good-governance advocacy group, Alliance for Good Governance and Democracy, expressed concern over the non-payment of over N5.6 billion outstanding monies owed contractors for the food supplied inmates   in Prisons nationwide, two years after the Federal Government announced increment in the feeding allowance of prison inmates.

The group in a press statement signed by its National Coordinator and National Secretary, Comrade Shadrack Nwokolo and Jimi Sanwo respectively, said after a thorough investigation of the state and conditions of prisons across the nation it discovered that contractors responsible for food supplies were being owed huge sums of money for the services they rendered to Nigerian Prisons Service for over two years.

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