The Nigerian Correctional Service has said 22 former members of the Boko Haram terrorist group have sat for the Senior School Certificate Examination.
The service explained that the ex-insurgents participated in the NCS de-radicalisation programme as part of their rehabilitation.
Disclosing this to journalists in Abuja on Wednesday, the Comptroller-General of the NCS, Ja’afaru Ahmed, said about 2, 745 condemned inmates were awaiting execution in various correctional facilities across the country.
The CG said,”As part of our rehabilitation process, 22 former members of Boko Haram who have been deradicalised by the Nigerian Correctional Service have sat for the Senior School Certificate Examination.”
The CG, who was represented by the NSC spokesman, Francis Enobore, advised governors to sign their execution warrant.
The NCS boss stated that the Administration of Criminal Justice Act was meant to hasten the trial of suspects and enhance the decongestion of correctional facilities.
“Governors are not willing to sign death sentences of condemned inmates, neither are they ready to commute their death sentence to life imprisonment,” Ahmed lamented.
He noted that about 24 states had domesticated the ACJA, adding that the Act would help in decongesting correctional facilities “as some of its provisions empower correctional centres to reject inmates so that facilities are not overcrowded.”
The CG further pointed out that the NCS had developed the Corrections Information Management System to capture inmates’ biometric, access the length of remand and pre-trial detention proceedings in the correction system.
He said the CIMS project had already taken off in some facilities across the country.
“In order to improve access to justice for pre-trial detainees, a total of 382 operational vehicles have been procured and distributed between 2016 and 2018, for inmates to be taken to court for hearing as and when due,” Ahmed explained.
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