Yobe initiates loan scheme for ex-convicts
From Njadvara Musa, Damaturu
YOBE State government has introduced a loan package to rehabilitate ex-convicts in the state.
Governor Bukar Abba Ibrahim said this on Tuesday in Damaturu, the state capital, when the Special Assistant to the President on Prisons Matters, Mr. Tunji Adepo, paid him an official visit at the Government House.
He noted that the project, which will be called Ex-convict Revolving Loan Scheme (ERLS), had become necessary to ensure their "complete reformation and integration into the society".
He explained that the scheme would enable ex-convicts to have direct access to working capital in establishing their small and medium scale businesses.
Ibrahim reminded them that the essence of serving jail terms was a corrective measure to make them change their attitude and behaviour, adding that they would become better citizens after being reformed in the prisons.
He added: "The introduction of the Ex-convicts Revolving Loan Scheme was part of the state government's efforts in making them become self-reliant and integrated into the mainstream of the larger society".
The governor lamented that 80 per cent of the prisons in the country are over-crowded, adding with the over-flow of more inmates in Yobe alone, a prisons cell that was built for 10 inmates was accommodating 30, thereby raising the occupancy rate by 200 per cent in the last 15 years.
He, therefore, urged the special assistant to intervene and improve the dilapidated prisons' conditions. "Such improvement will include the construction of more prisons cells and other infrastructural facilities for both the prisons' workers and the inmates", he added.
According to him, this is the only way the welfare and working conditions of both workers and inmates could be improved without sacrificing the speedy dispensation of justice and the resultant decongestion of the prisons.
He noted that prisons congestion is caused by "unnecessary adjournment of case by the law courts".
Responding, Adepo reiterated that some of the prisons were even older than the country, adding that the facilities were not only over-stretched but unsuitable for the prisons' inmates and personnel.
He assured the governor and people of Yobe that the Federal Government would build more prisons to meet international standards on its welfare and reforms.
