*** Lagos Has Highest Number of Prisoners
Tayo Olanipekun
Persons incarcerated for stealing, robbery and armed robbery topped the number of those admitted into Nigerian prisons for various offences last year with Lagos, Rivers and Kano recording the highest inmates population, statistics has shown.
The Prison Statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday revealed that a total of 47,702 persons are in the nation’s prisons for stealing with 751 others also being held for debt. This is as 11,258 and 6,193 are behind bars for robbery and armed robbery respectively.
The country’s prison inmate population for 2016 was given as 68, 686, a 5.62 per cent increase over the figure for the previous year.  Of this figure, Lagos, Rivers and Kano states accounted for 7,396, 4,424 and 4,183 respectively. The prisons in each of the state have the holding capacity of 3,927, 1,354 and 2, 116 respectively, making the prisons in Rivers State some of the most congested in the land.
The actual capacity of the prisons in Nigeria stood at50, 803, leaving 17,883 inmates overcrowding the correctional facilities, according to NBS.
NBS, in the report, explained that those on prison admission include individuals held in the facilities but have not been through trial “and are released after a few days, depending on the crime, or those waiting for trial.” It added, also, that inmates are those that have been through trials or are “serving different sentences or are awaiting sentencing by the courts.”
Its report, however, showed that there are 89, 404 awaiting trial on the prison admission record for 2016, out of which 309 are under 16 years of age and 13, 659 are aged 20 and younger. It gave the total of prison admission by type of imprisonment to be 142,848 persons.
The report, however, showed Ekiti and Bayelsa states had the least number of inmate population. The states have 444 and 585 prisoners respectively as against the prison capacity of 200 and 400.
It is recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari recently described the congestion in the country’s prisons as a national scandal. He stated this when he received in Presidential Villa a delegation led by the Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Walter Onnoghen.
The President had emphasized the need for measures to decongest the nation’s prisons, citing cost saving and welfare of prisoners as some of the reasons the action was necessary.