Kemi, a female inmate who was arrested in 2020, narrated her ugly experience on how she was unaware of her pregnancy until she was transferred to the Ondo Female Prison on November 24, 2020.
There, she stayed with 16 others in a room she said was “not big”. “The prison has no bed frame, only foam and it is kept on the floor,” she said.
“The foam is like a normal student foam and we each have a blanket to cover ourselves. We were given one uniform each to be worn from Monday to Friday.”
According to her: “No hospital, no dispensary and no sickbay in the prison. All the time I was there, no doctor came to check me and my baby and I was the only person pregnant in the prison. They have no special food for pregnant women. They serve us less than one cup of beans every morning.
“In the afternoon, sometimes they give us ordinary garri to soak without sugar or anything else, or sometimes, eba. And in the evening, garri with soyabean soup that is tasteless and has no oil, fish or meat in it. They normally serve us rice only on Sundays.”
According to data released by the World Prison Brief, WPB, in January 2022, of the 70,797 inmates in Nigerian prisons as of 2022, 69,501 are male while 1,296 are female. Thus, men currently account for 98.2% of the prison population, while women are 1.8%.
From Kirikiri Prison in Lagos, to Agodi in Ibadan, Ijebu-Ode in Ogun State, to Ebonyi, Ondo, Osun, to the east, the south and the north, female inmates in correctional centres experience prisons’ various challenges starting from their mental health, welfare, prison congestion, education, social inclusion, security, finance, budget among others.
Similarly, the well being of the female inmates as well as pregnant and nursing mothers, have also been jeopardised.
Accordingly, the prison warders, officers, and other workers taking care of the female prisons seem to be facing challenges in the line of duty.
At the just-concluded workshop on ‘Gender Responsive Shadow Budget organised by Centre for Gender Economics in Africa, it was revealed that, the number of women going to prison has increased at a much faster rate than that of men. For instance between 2013 – 2016, the percentage increase in the number of women that went to prison was more than that of men, except for 2016. The latest data, 2020, shows that the percentage increase in the number of women that went to prison stood at 8.8% in 2020 from 0.6% in 2016, while that of men dropped to 0.1% from 5.8% in 2016. It has since increased annually, and only dropped slightly in 2020.
Kirikiri Female Prison in Lagos and Numan Old Prison in Adamawa were built to accommodate 611 inmates, but as of 2020, there were 1,238 female inmates in these prisons, which is more than twice the population of female inmates that ought to be there.
Prison overcrowding appears to be a major problem in many African countries, not just Nigeria. It is the same in Cote d’Ivoire’s prison system, Ghana’s prison system and even in Senegal among others.
However, in Nigeria, the majority of these inmates are awaiting trial as reported in Dataphyte’s story that revealed at least 7 out of 10 inmates currently serving time in Nigerian prisons are still awaiting trial.
Inadequate health-care facilities, inadequate correctional facilities, overcrowding, and insufficient sanitary products are some of the age-old challenges confronting prison systems in many African countries.
Besides the fact that the Nigerian prisons are overcrowded, the inmates are also exposed to harsh treatment and life-threatening conditions. Most inmates, particularly women are denied access to necessary healthcare services.
Many female inmates in correctional centres across Nigeria have limited access to basic hygiene and health care products, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC revealed.
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