The Deputy Comptroller of Prisons, Musa Tanko, gave this figure on Sunday when a delegation of the Alumni Association of the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Abuja chapter, visited the prison to donate vocational equipment to the inmates.
The delegation, led by the Chairperson of the association, Prof. Kate Nwufor, donated industrial sewing machines as well as other items to the prison.
Tanko, while taking members of the association round the facilities of the prison, said the Kuje Prison was overcrowded, urging the judiciary to assist in decongesting it.
He said rather than having a total inmates of 560, the Kuje Prison currently had about 852 prisoners.
Of this figure, he said 639 of them were awaiting trial while those convicted stood at 213.
Giving a breakdown of the offences of those awaiting trial, he said 183 were held for robbery, 18 for terror offences, 126 for drug-related offences and 98 for culpable homicide.
He added, “This prison has the capacity of locking 560 inmates at a time but we have 852; meaning we are locking far above the capacity and this is a problem we are facing in our prisons everywhere.”
Nwufor, who spoke to journalists shortly after handing over the vocational equipment to officials of Kuje Prison, said the donation was part of the agenda of the association to empower the vulnerable people in the society.
She stated, “We are doing this because we want to help the inmates to acquire sellable skills that they can translate into something meaningful that can help them earn a living when they come out of the prison.
“We have seen the condition of the prison and we are hoping that the government, in future, should build better prisons for our prisoners.
“They should emulate what is done in the developed world where we have good prisons so that what the prisoners should be caring about is that their liberty has been constrained and not that they will be suffering as they are congested.”
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