A human rights lawyer, Edward Omaga, on Friday called on the federal and state governments to decongest correctional centres as a measure to prevent the menace of jail breaks across the country.
He also suggested the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution to settle conflicts, saying it would reduce the case loads for judges and give them adequate time to focus on serious cases
Omaga stated these during the unveiling of his GrayLaw Practice Limited Partnership, a legal consulting firm.
He also explained why Nigerian prisons should be decongested.
The PUNCH reprts that in October 2020, hoodlums took advantage of the #ENDSARS protest to attack three Nigerian Correctional Service facilities in Edo and Ondo states, releasing over 2000 inmates and killing about a dozen security agents manning the facilities.
Since then, Nigeria had continued to witness more incidents of prison breaks.
While at least 2,051 inmates escaped after the October 2020 jailbreaks in both states, some of the inmates voluntarily returned and turned themselves in.
About 13 other jailbreaks had taken place since the October 2020 incident with at least six of them, including the incident in Kuje prison, recording success.
Omaga said, “Decongesting the prison is what we should be doing now. We believe that you solve a problem before it arrives by preventing it. For instance, for somebody who has spent five years awaiting trial for stealing bicycle, how do you reconcile that? And another politician is released from prison after three months, either because of no conviction, or no case to substantiate. These are because of plea bargain.
“The young man who is in prison for five years because he steals a motorbike, or bicycle is so angry that he could do anything, even in the prison. And that is why you hear of jailbreak. But if a man goes into prison awaiting trial, and in the next three months, his case is decided he’s either convicted or released to go free. There won’t be a need to worry.
“For instance, the prisons have had instance where a young man who fought at with someone is kept on prison with terrorists and rapists. The tendency is that after a very short while, the young man who went as an innocent person to prison becomes a criminal. I can assure you that what they’re discussing in prison is beyond what we can say here in the prison. They do all manner of things, all manner of atrocities because the system is loose.
“This is because you can imagine the people making phone calls right from the prison, so that is a level of rot we’re talking about. Unless we decongest prison, we’ll be having 1000 people in the prison that we should have 300 people. Then there is hygiene, health and jailbreak problem”.
Speaking on situations whereby lawyers are accused of aiding money laundering and abetting corruption, he said politicians should rather be blamed for the illegality.
He believed that the present administration has to a larger extent understood the concept of separation of powers, including obeying the rule of law.
Omaga said, “I will agree with you that there are some cases that lawyers were involved in either money laundering or whatsoever. But I can also tell you that there are too many lawyers who are doing well in practice. If you say a lawyer is involved in money laundering, the question you should ask is who gave him the money to launder.
“I think we should be talking about the politicians who give money to a lawyer or give whatever brief to a lawyer to use it as a way of laundering money. But by and large, we advocate that lawyers are the engineers and touch bearers of the society.”
He said the firm was established to accommodate expansion in different legal practice areas and to serve different categories of clients both locally and internationally.
Omaga said, “One of the fundamental things we do in this chamber is what we call public interest litigation. It goes to show that we are development and transparency. How do we make the society a better place for people to live in? So most times, you’ll see that people different types of cases, either for human rights sake, or cases, corruption or something of that nature, just to make sure that the country is on the pedestal of growth, stability and development, we handle that free of charge.
“From this office, lawyers are deployed to do a lot of work with government and private dealers to make sure that there is peace.”
