By Miracle Ogunde
The Nigeria Correctional Services, (NCoS) has described as ‘grossly inadequate’, the feeding of inmates considering the present economic hardship affecting the country.
The NCos said it had proposed an upward review of N3,000 daily feeding cost for an inmate, which had been submitted to the Minister of Interior.
According to the latest summary on the NCoS website, the inmate population, is 77,602 out of which convicted inmates are 23,896 and awaiting trial inmates, 53,706.
In the 2024 budget, NCoS is to spend N24,447,582,237 on the supply of catering materials and foodstuffs.
Meanwhile, the Controller General, NCoS, Haliru Nababa,
had on December 7, 2023, disclosed at a joint National Assembly Committee on Interior that the service spends N800 per day to feed each of the 900 dogs in the service while just N750 is allocated to feed each prisoner, majority of whom are awaiting trials, at N250 per meal.
Speaking on how the service was going around the economic situation to ensure that the welfare of inmates and staff was not impacted to give room for an uprising within the facilities, the NCoS Spokesperson, Umar Abubakar, explained, “There is no doubt that the current economic situation in the world is biting harder and the Service is not left out of this conundrum.
“However, we have been ingenious in adequately managing the resources allocated to the service to cater for the staff and inmates. In its frugality, we have utilised meagre resources in the face of daunting economic conditions. I think the Service should be commended for this effort and ingenuity.
“You would agree with me that the present feeding rate of inmates is grossly inadequate and it takes an excellent manager to navigate the economic contours we are experiencing. So far, we have not recorded any issue or uprising in our facilities due to poor feeding or welfare of inmates.”
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