On giving inmates the vote

 

FROM THE GALLERY VIEW MAHMUD JEGA

This story that I read in several newspapers and online media at the weekend, about ensuring that inmates in Nigerian prisons exercise the right to vote in elections, left me flabbergasted and perused, to quote my secondary school senior student who was famous for his verbosity. It all started last Friday when Controller General of Nigeria Prison [sorry, Correctional] Service, Sylvester Nwakuche, paid a visit to Prof Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC], in order to lobby for support to ensure the participation of inmates in the country’s elections.

Look here, Oga Controller General. You are a very big man; I imagine how many years you must have spent in uniform, trying to make sure that inmates, whether convicts, awaiting trial or even those on death row awaiting execution, remain within the four corners of “correctional” walls. [Pray, what is there to correct for a person who is on death row?] You must have had many sleepless nights and thousands of moments of anxiety and anguish. In Nigeria here, even keeping students in their classrooms is a very big task, so is keeping civil servants on their desks, keeping workers at their work stations, keeping lecturers in lecture halls, keeping policemen in their stations, keeping legislators in their chambers for sittings, or even keeping judges in their court rooms and stopping them from adjourning cases. All those are easier than keeping inmates behind prison walls, taking them to court in Black Maria trucks, guarding them through the long court process, coping with inmates’ tricks such as saying they want to go to the toilet, not to talk of guarding the inmates we see being marched along the road, being taken to some houses or offices to sweep the yard or cut the grass.

Oga Controller General, of all the problems you have, is it voting by inmates that is your biggest concern? What about feeding them? In January this year, Federal Government increased the daily feeding allowance of inmates in Nigerian prisons from N750 to N1,125 “in a bid to improve the welfare of those in custody.” One thousand one hundred and twenty-five naira a day! How many meals do you give them with that amount? Is it the proverbial three square meals that human beings desire to eat every day? I don’t even know who set that benchmark, but it is probably the World Health Organisation [WHO] in league with the Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, both of them agencies of the United Nations Organisation [UNO].

UN agencies are notoriously unrealistic in all their projections, such as saying a certain percentage of national budgets must be set aside for education, another percentage for health, a certain ratio of doctors to patients, a certain number of hospital bed spaces per 1,000 people, and a certain number of policemen for every one thousand people. By the time you add all the percentages together, it comes to about 300% of national budgets. Is it UN that will give us the money?

Back to our food budget. Oga CG, if you have 1,125 naira to feed a prisoner a day, it comes to N375 per square meal. Even a round meal in Nigeria today costs a heck more than that! Except if you are in Kano. It is only in Kano that you can eat for N300, at least according to the Buhari-era Minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono. When people complained about the rising cost of food, he said one can eat a good meal for N300 in Kano. Trust Kanawa; one young man in Kano was seen on social media entering a restaurant. He ate to his fill and when the restaurant owner came for the money, he gave her N300, saying the minister in charge of food security set that benchmark price for eating in Kano. Everyone who has been inside a Nigerian prison came out complaining of poor feeding. Years ago when I visited an inmate in Sokoto prison, he told me that the soup that was served to them, water was on one side and the smattering of soup ingredients congregated in one corner of the bowl. I therefore urge NCS to pack all their inmates to Kano, where a good meal costs N300.

Oga CG, I thought that you were so busy with the issue of prison security and preventing jail breaks that you never thought of voting rights of inmates. In Nigeria there are two types of security; to keep some people out and to keep some people in. Most of the fences, barbed wires, iron gates, high walls, padlocks, guard dogs, security lights, electric fences, guard towers and armed security men that ring Nigerian houses are meant to keep intruders out. It is only Mr. Nwakuche that installs all of these things in his facilities in order to keep people inside. A man who is so engaged, why should he add to his problems by demanding for the right of inmates to go out on election days to cast a vote, knowing full well that many of them could use that opportunity to sneak away or scale the fences?

I must commend the INEC Chairman for his patience and for sitting down quietly to receive the CG of Correctional Services and listened to his demand. If I had mystic powers to peer into the Chairman’s mind, he must have thought, when he heard the visitor was coming, that he was coming to offer help to INEC in the policing of voting stations with thousands of his armed warders and trained sniffer dogs. So far, policemen and Civil Defence people, even with armed soldiers in the background, have been unable to provide adequate security at polling stations and counting centers. Prof Yakubu must had hoped that Correctional Services was coming to offer additional help. But they actually came and added to his problems.

CG sir, a man who is inside a Nigerian prison, whether as a convict or as awaiting trial, who told you that voting is on his mind? His first concern is eating. From what we hear from former inmates, powerful warlord inmates control prison wards and they get to eat the best food, before anyone else can feed. It is not only here in Nigeria, mark you. I once read the memoirs of a Watergate burglar who was an inmate in a California prison. He said on his first day in the cell, food was placed on the table and they were told to go and eat. When he stood up, another inmate pulled his trouser and told him to remain seated. All other inmates remained seated. He said one slim inmate then stood up, went and ate, before the rest of them rushed for the food. He soon found out that the first eater was Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno, boss of the Los Angeles Mafia family. All the other inmates in the cell were Mafia enforcers who had been brought there from various prisons to serve as his bodyguards!

After food, an inmate’s big concern is personal security. Prisons, deceptively named correctional centers, are very dangerous places despite all the investment in security. Hard drugs, knives, cudgels and all kinds of dangerous objects are routinely smuggled into them, and a guy could get killed for one wrong move. Such wrong moves include resisting sexual molestation, failing to submit to the over lordship of the cell’s kingpin, or even telling other prisoners that you were in there for a small offence such as traffic violation. Many years ago, I read a feature in Daily Times of a man who was sent to Ikoyi Prison in Lagos for crossing the highway. When each inmate in the cell was asked to state his crime, a fellow inmate advised him to say he committed murder. That earned him instant respect within the cell!

The INEC Chairman said during the visit that while the law allows inmates awaiting trial to vote in elections if they are registered voters, the modalities for doing so have to be worked out. He is right. Is it every body that registered to vote who has the chance to vote? What about people in IDP camps? Someone in Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Kaduna, Benue and Plateau states who was chased out of his village in the middle of the night by bandits, taking along his PVC is the last thing on his mind. Many people arrive at IDP camps with only the cloth on their necks; many are separated from their families. Which voting are they thinking of?

Prof Yakubu mentioned something, that when inmates are allowed to vote, will political parties be allowed to campaign inside the prisons and to post polling agents at voting centers inside prison walls? Imagine a Nigerian politician standing on a podium inside a prison and campaigning! Nigerian politicians are among the cleverest liars on Earth. They instantly know what voters want to hear, and in the case of an inmate, he has no greater wish than to be out of the prison. During the Second Republic, a clever politician in the old Sokoto State was said to have promised voters that he will install a pump that will dish out fura, the staple sorghum drink of Northern Nigeria! A politician campaigning inside a prison will promise a blanket amnesty for all the prisoners, convicts no matter their crimes, those awaiting trial no matter the gravity or even the weight of evidence against them, and he will even offer blanket amnesty to death row inmates!

CG Nwakuche said on Friday that there are 81,000 people currently in custody nationwide, 66 per cent of them awaiting trial. That number is more than enough to tilt the outcome in a close local government, legislative or perhaps even a gubernatorial election. In Sokoto State in the 2019 election, the governor was re-elected with a 300 vote margin, so imagine what 81,000 votes will do. Also because voter turnout in Nigerian elections is a historic low. Only 26.72% of voters trooped to the polls for the 2023 presidential elections; now that cost of transport and everything else has quadrupled, how many people do you think will troop out in future elections? Inmates, however, will have a greater motivation to vote than free people. At least they will breathe fresh air, and they will also be transported free to polling stations, inside Black Maria trucks.

Even those of us who are not [yet] inside prisons, how eager are we to vote in elections? Please CG, concentrate on other problems and forget about making inmates to vote.