The Senate Committee on Interior has said that it would undertake an upward review of inmates’ feeding cost from N450 to N1,000 per day.
The decision was taken, on Wednesday, after officials of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) appeared before the Committee to defend the 2022 budget estimates.
While the NCoS officials proposed the increment of the feeding cost from N450 to N750 due to high cost of food items, a member of the panel, Sen. Chukwuka Utazi said the amount is grossly inadequate to feed the inmates.
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According to Sen. Utazi, “You’re dealing with adults. How can they survive with that amount? When you send convicts to prisons, instead of reforming them, they become more hardened because of the way they’re treated, particularly food.”
After Chairman of the Committee, Sen. Kashim Shettima pointed out that there were 66,000 inmates in custodial centres across the country and 47,559 of them are unconvicted, the Committee decided to meet with the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and other stakeholders over the decongestion of custodial centres and the situation of awaiting trial inmates.
