FG To Pay N500m Fine For 4,000 Nigerians To Release Them From Prison

Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji Ojo, says the Federal Government will pay the fines of over 4,000 inmates costing over five hundred million naira to ensure their release as they have been in correctional facilities due to their inability to pay these fines.

He revealed that he has already set up committees to figure out the reasons for the congestion in Nigeria’s correctional centres and how to reduce the numbers.

Immediately I assumed office, the first thing I did was to set up a small committee to be able to review the situation of our correctional centres, vis-à-vis the inmates as they are, and we discovered that over 4,000 of these inmates, as I’ve said before, are still in custody due to inability to pay fines.

We looked at how much they owe, the total fine is about a total of five hundred and something million, and I can tell you we’ve gone very far dealing with the private sector in terms of CSR, putting this money together.

For instance, I will give you an example, The situation of the correctional service is very worrisome, for instance, in the Lagos command, of all the correctional centres, in total, the correctional centres were built for like 4,800 if I get my statistics right, but today, we have over 9,000 inmates, so that’s over a 100% in Lagos alone.

I called a meeting last week, and I have inaugurated a committee headed by the Director, joint services, in the ministry of Interior, we have the Nigeria Immigration Service, we have the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, we have the boundary Commission because we need to define our boundaries, you cannot go an defend another man’s land, and your border is where your right stops.