Many inmates are alleged to be rotting in some Correctional Centres in in Akwa Ibom State, a journalist quoted some officials of the centres.
Straightnews understands that some inmates are financially handicapped and others who commit minor offences have no legal counsels to bail them.
A journalist, who did not want his name in print, penned this in Courts Whatsapp group on Thursday.
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This was as Akwa Ibom State High Court, Uyo, granted bail to a 22-year-old prison inmate, who delivered a bouncing baby girl in Uyo Correctional Centre.
The nursing mother and her younger brother were held while awaiting trial for allegedly receiving stolen phone worth N2,000.
Responding to his colleague’s shock at suspect being locked up for 2k phone… with pregnancy until the child birth and still remained locked, the journalist wrote ‘‘Prison officials called from Eket and Ikot Abasi Prisons that they heard the report whether we can also come to Eket and Ikot Abasi that so many inmates have been in custody for no reason without trial for years, rotting in prison because they don’t have anyone to speak out for them…
‘‘Thank you everyone in this group for promoting the cause of justice in this state. A lot of people are wasting in prisons for nothing. It could be our brothers and sisters. I tell you our reports have forced the police, prison officials, Judges, and lawyers to sit up,’’ he added.
However, Justice Ntong, moved by the condition of the six-month-old infant, who has also been in prison since she was born September 24, 2022, granted the siblings of the nursing mother (names withheld) unconditional bail.
Counsel to the defendants, Barrister Samson Adula told the Court that the situation was sympathetic, in which a 40-year-old Police Inspector Omodot Itoro-Etim attached to the State Intelligence Bureau, State Police Headquarters, Ikot Akpan Abia arrested and detained the poor orphans, accusing them and two others of breaking into the owner’s shop at Aka Etinan, Uyo in December 2019 to steal phones and recharge cards.
The siblings were charged for conspiracy to receive stolen property and receiving stolen property.
Barrister Adula, who is the State Coordinator, Legal Aid Council of Nigeria, also told the Court that after the arrest of the accused persons, a POS operator and a sales boy in a bakery, the prosecution abandoned them in prison.
In a ruling, Justice Ntong said the situation was enough to admit the defendants to bail especially because of the innocent infant girl.
Justice Ntong also said that the mother of the child who dropped out of school in SS 2 and her younger brother, an SS 3 dropout, were constitutionally presumed innocent.
The defendants who are indigenes of Edem Idim Ibakesi in Ini Local Government Area, had in their extrajudicial statements said they bought an itel phone worth N2,000 from a neighbour without knowing it was stolen, which landed them in prison custody since January 2022.
