Juliana Taiwo
11 October 2007
Abuja — The Federal Executive Council yesterday approved N200 per day for each inmate. There are over 40,000 inmates, 80 per cent of whom are awaiting trial across the country. The amount was formerly N150.
Briefing State House Correspondents, Minister for Information and Communi-cations, Mr John Odey, said the amount was arrived at, based on the memo submitted by Minister for Interior and FEC's awareness of the fact that the last review was done in 2000.
The new arrangement is to begin on January 1, 2008, when the Federal Government would make budgetary allocations in the 2008 budget.
Odey said FEC also agreed to involve states and local government hosting the prisons in cost sharing.
Accompanied by the Minister for Interior, Godwin Abe, Minister for Sports, Minister of State Federal Capital Territory, John James Akpwanudoedehe and Comp-troller-General of Prisons, Odey said the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) was making efforts to get lawyers to assist some of the inmates to ensure fair hearing and speedy justice.
On if the N200 was not too small, the Information Minister said: "It is going to be bulk buying and that is why we also said we will look at the other aspect of how we will collaborate with the states and LGAs in this regard".
"The FEC meeting was a brief one and purely administrative discussions and one of the issues that engaged council was the issue of reform of the prisons.
Council looked at various situation of the prison ranging from the condition that we have the inmates and the feeding arrangement. Council graciously approved that the feeding sum of N150 be increased to N200 per inmate.
"Other areas of water and gas supply are being arranged to ensure that the supply is regular".
He said FEC also congratulated Samuel Peter for retaining his title as the world heavyweight-boxing champion.
"You are aware that President had earlier congratulated him and he (Peter) has sent message through Minister of Sports that on his arrival he will immediately come over to pay homage and respect to Mr. President".
The Minister said the Council also deliberated on sustainable agriculture, qualitative education and health care but specific decisions will be taken on how best to ameliorate some of the problems identified in the next FEC meeting.
On what happened to the prison reform fund launch? The Prisons Comptroller General throwing more light said: "Maybe you are talking about the UNODC launching that the President did last year, it is still ongoing. You are aware that there was a committee set up by Mr. President then that worked on the total reformation of the judicial system and a white paper was submitted to the government and we are awaiting the implementation of the white paper".
Council also condoled the management of Independent African Television (AIT) on the loss of their staff. Ms. Shiminenge Sende of the Shiminenge, an indigene of Benue State, who died in the line of duty in far away Geneva.
"We receive it with shock and we awaiting further report from Genevaand we have sent delegation to condole the management of AIT", he said.
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