Congestion: Nasarawa CJ deploys judges to prisons for special sittings
NAN-H-51
Prisons
By Sunday John
Lafia March 7, 20167 (NAN) The Chief Judge (CJ) of Nasarawa State, Justice Suleiman Dikko, has deployed High Court Judges to hear cases in prisons yards, so as to reduce the number of inmates awaiting trial.
Dikko announced this measure on Tuesday at the Lafia Prison, when he commenced his four-day working tour of the four Federal Prisons in the state.
He attributed the delay in justice administration to the “action and inaction of some stakeholders in the judicial system”.
Dikko particularly noted that the police still assign robbery and culpable homicide cases to lower courts even when they were aware that the courts did not have jurisdiction over such matters.
He decried the rising cases of missing files of some inmates charged over capital offences in lower courts, and regretted that some had not been taken to courts for more than three years.
Dikko directed that such cases be immediately transferred to the High Courts.
He also advised judges, who send accused to prison on matters that are bailable, to desist so as not to tarnish the image of the judiciary.
He said that the purpose of the visit was to ensure that inmates wrongly sent to prison were set free in accordance with the relevant laws.
The CJ urged the welfare department of every prison to get phone numbers of relatives of inmates that were granted bail, but had yet to leave the prisons.
He assigned a counsel to awaiting trial inmates that had stayed in remand for many years because they lacked the money to engage a counsel, so as to speed up their trial.
Earlier, Mr Ekwere Ekanem, Controller of Prisons in Nasarawa State, had thanked the CJ and his team for the visit, and expressed the hope that those released would live good lives outside the yard.
He complained that the Lafia Prison, like other prisons in the state, was heavily congested, pointing out that the facilities were not enough to cater for the growing number of inmates.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that officials of the National Human Rights Commission and Legal Aid Council of Nigeria, private lawyers and judges accompanied Dikko on the visit. (NAN)
SDJ/DO/ETS
==========
Edited by David Onilede and Ephraims Sheyin