9th October, 2022
By Ibironke Ariyo
A total of 18,000 inmates will be accommodated in the six custodial centres being constructed by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, gave these figures when he was featured on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum in Abuja.
Three of these custodial centres located in Karshi, Janguza and Bori were at different stages of completion. The other three mega custodial centres in Ilesha, Umuahia, and another in the Northeast are at different stages of take-off.
According to him, the modern custodial facilities were spread across Nigeria’s geo-political zones.
He said that the new project was part of the Federal Government’s commitment to the reform of correctional services in Nigeria.
“Our administration on assumption of duty decided to have special facilities, of which six such facilities were proposed at the beginning.
“What is special about the facilities we are talking about is, we now have mega facilities, I call it custodial village facility, because each of the six will have the capacity for 3,000 inmates.
“This is almost unprecedented in Africa, if not in the world. In Africa, no nation has such facility within my own limit of knowledge from the study of African continent, there is no nation not even South of Africa.
“Three are very close to completion, one is almost completed; that is the one at Janguza in Kano; we will commission that by the end of this year, latest,” he said.
Aregbesola said that the facility in Karshi, FCT was 75 percent completed while that of Bori in Rivers was about 55 per cent.
However, he appealed to President Buhari to provide special funding to complete the three custodial villages.
NAN