Legal Aid to advise govt on juvenile prisoners
From Emmanuel Onwubiko, Abuja
W ORRIED by the cases of juvenile prisoners in the country, the Legal Aid Council, an agency of the Federal Ministry of Justice, disclosed at the weekend that it has begun the headcount of the youths involved in order to advise the Federal Government on how to rehabilitate them.
The council also said government was devising ways to ensure that juveniles were not locked up with hardened criminals anywhere in the country.
The Director-General of the council, Mrs. Uju Hassan-Baba, who spoke with The Guardian after a recent tour of some prisons facilities in the North, also canvassed speedy reforms in the judiciary as panacea to congestion in the prisons.
She said: "The problem of under-age and women offenders are more prevalent in the southern parts of the country than in the North. I think non-custodial sentencing and community services, if provided in the nation's statute books, would take adequate care of these set of prison inmates."
Mrs. Hassan-Baba attributed the rise in the number of underage prisoners in the southern part of the country to the poor understanding of the law by some magistrates.
She declared that Nigeria, as a signatory to the United Nations (UN) convention, must reach the minimum standard in prison arrangements.
In 1959, the UN General Assembly, proceeding from the framework of the Geneva Declaration, adopted the UN declaration on the rights of the child, which is based on the premise that by reason of their physical and mental immaturity, children need special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection.
With the drafting of the UN convention on the rights of the child and its adoption by the heads of government at the world summit for children in 1990, it became binding.
Also in 1990, the leaders of African states adopted the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the child.
The legal aid boss stated that magistrates and other lower court judges ought to be sufficiently enlightened on the implications of sending young offenders to the same prison as adult criminals.
"Magistrates should have the courage to do the right thing because majority of these criminal cases pass through their courts," she said.
Mrs. Hassan-Baba suggested other strategies to better prison conditions in the country, saying: "Classification of prisons must be adopted in the ongoing judicial reforms. There should be categorisation of inmates and where they should be kept.
"Inmates awaiting trial are not supposed to be kept with the hardened criminals already serving their terms. These issues are being seriously considered."
The director-general also canvassed the creation of job opportunities as one of the ways to check social crimes and also commended the Chief Judges of Bauchi, Taraba and Yobe states for "ensuring that the nation's legal system works."
