![]() ![]() Muhammed Adamu, 36, was at a friend’s birthday party at a bar in Mushin, a Lagos suburb, in 2019 when a fight broke out. Why? Because at the end of the day, there is not the political will to change,” says Chapman. “The law is getting better on paper, addressing some of these challenges, but not a total system change. Photograph: Friedrich Stark/Alamyīut legal experts say more needs to be done. Suspects are sometimes on remand for longer than the sentence for the crime of which they are accused. The minister for justice, Abubakar Malami, says the committee freed 10,000 inmates in four years. This followed the launch of the presidential committee on prison reform and decongestion, which he heads. And in 2016, Justice Ishaq Usman Bello, a former chief judge of the Federal Capital Territory, started visiting prisons in his jurisdiction to free prisoners whose remand period had exceeded the maximum sentence possible for the crime. It can take several years to get a referral, leaving the suspect is remanded in prison, sometimes for longer than the sentence would be for the crime of which they are accused.Įfforts have been made to speed up the judicial process, including the 2015 Administration of Criminal Justice Act. Similar to the UK, magistrates deal with minor offences such as traffic violations and public disturbances while serious offences are referred to the high court by the director of public prosecution (DPP). In Nigeria, criminal cases are tried in magistrates courts and the high court. It affects people who have no resources to hire lawyers and to pay the kind of money the police and other people in the justice system may demand to get out. “What we see is probably the worst face of the justice system. And how long will family members continue waiting for you, or continue to support you? Because, of course, once you are in the prison system or even just in police custody, to have any reasonable quality of life, you need family members bringing you food, otherwise you are basically stuck with rations that will erode your health very quickly,” she says. The people around you, the community, the society may come to different conclusions about the reasons you are gone. ![]() “There is a sense of total limbo with being stuck in the system. “Can you imagine just being picked up out of your day-to-day life without any warning, without a chance to prepare, and potentially not going back to that life for five, six, eight years?” says Megan Chapman, co-director of Justice & Empowerment Initiatives, an NGO providing pro-bono services to Akeem. In a prison population of almost 70,000, more than 50,000 are awaiting trial, many having spent years on remand. “The experience is very bad, I don’t know how to say it, but the experience is bad,” he says.Īkeem’s situation is not unique. It affects people who have no resources to hire lawyers Megan Chapman, Justice & Empowerment Initiatives What we see is probably the worst face of the justice system. ![]() By then, Akeem will have spent almost six and a half years in pre-trial detention, without any evidence presented. His appearance lasts 10 minutes, with the judge adjourning the case to January. But he has been in a prison cell ever since.Īkeem’s case is called, and he shuffles into court. But his right leg was hit by a stray bullet – and he was arrested and charged with armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery, charges he denies. In August 2015, Akeem, a cobbler, says he came across a disturbance on his way home from work.Īkeem says he was scared by the police presence and ran away, without actually knowing what was going on. ![]()
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