Lagos State House of Assembly member, Mr Victor Akande, has commended the Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s commitment to decongest and improve the condition of correctional centres in six months. The lawmaker who represents Ojo Constituency I gave the commendation in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lagos.
According to him, the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) should be real centres for character reformation of criminals, instead of being a place where criminal are hardened.
“The minister’s plan is a very good radiance, a right step in the right direction. We need more people like Ogbeni in positions like this. They will be able to turn things around.
“We need people who know how a correctional centre should be. I appreciate him for setting up a committee on correctional centre decongestion. We need to decongest our centres and get better results. This is a welcome idea.
“We must redouble work on making our correctional centres real. This is where the inmate gets counsel and we develop them in various skills where they are good at and employ them. This is better than just feeding them, punishing them unnecessarily but we must turn them and make them productive to take care of themselves after leaving the centres,” he added.
He said that the condition of the centres had made criminals more hardened when finally released into society instead of being correctional centres.
Akande suggested that inmates should be engaged in farming, carpentry, civil engineering and others, instead of just confining them. He added that the NCS should redouble efforts at engaging inmates to have a reflection on what they had done with the aim of changing their minds.
“We place inmates in a situation where they cannot think but become a hardened criminal. Our prisons instead of correcting criminals harden them and that is not good.
