Oshiomhole: FG’s dogs eat better than prison inmates in Nigeria

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Interior, Senator Adams Oshiomhole (APC), has expressed concerns over the living conditions of prison inmates in the country.

Speaking during the 2024 budget defence session with the Joint Senate and House of  Representatives Committee on Interior, Oshiomhole expressed surprise that the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCS) spends more on feeding its dogs compared to inmates.

Earlier, the Comptroller General of the Correctional Service, Haliru Nababa had told the Committee 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.

Nababa who told the lawmakers that there are over N81,000 inmates across the custodial centres nationwide, with more than 53,000 of them awaiting trial.

He noted that amount was grossly inadequate, just as he said that they had proposed an upward review of N3,000 daily per inmate and the proposal had been submitted to the Minister of Interior. 

“The total number of inmates in 2023 is 81,354 nationwide while 53, 352 are awaiting trial. We feed each inmate with N750 daily and they are fed 3 times daily (N250 for each square meal). We have 900 security dogs and to feed a dog each day is N800 daily,” Nababa said.

“We wrote a letter to the President to review 3,000 per day for each inmate. We want this committee to assist us in putting in words for us. The money is grossly inadequate. The budget for feeding each of them per day is N751 per day at N250 per meal, per inmate.”

He explained that the feeding allowance per day would be reduced to N720 after the reduction of VAT and tax.

Oshiomhole lamented that while the fault might not be that of the Correctional Service, it was heart-wrecking to know that the Nigerian government has been dehumanizing her citizens.

“The figures given here suggest that you have been dehumanizing Nigerians. If it was the policy of the Federal Government to appropriate more money to feed dogs than human beings, we must correct  errors of the past,” Oshiomhole said.

According to him, the government must scale up efforts to address unemployment as prisoners from other countries have made matters worse by taking up jobs meant for Nigerians, describing the situation as an inhumane.

The article was originally published on Politics Nigeria.