At an Access to Justice in Nigeria parley, the Nigeria Correctional Service yesterday raised issues over 5,000 inmates who have been sentenced to death by hanging but have waited for decades without their sentences being carried out.

The Controller-General, Nigerian Correctional Service (NC0S), Haliru Nababa, represented by Gimba Dumbulwa, Assistant Controller, Custody of the Service, said the delay is linked to governors and their reluctance to sign their death warrants, which is contributing to prison congestion.

“Some of those sentenced to death by hanging have stayed for 10, 15 or even 20 years in custody while their death sentence has not been signed by governors.”

He called on stakeholders from the respective states to use their Attorney Generals to influence their governors to see that those inmates on death row can have their sentences commuted to imprisonment. This he said is expedient so that those that have spent long years of sentence could be released.

According to him, there 80,020 inmates with 5,076 awaiting death throughout the country.

Prof Yemi Akinseyi George (SAN) of the Center for Socio-Legal Studies, who presented the keynote address on “Opening the Path to Justice: Current Challenges and Prospects of the Nigerian Justice system” said justice in Nigeria is for the rich.

According to him, only the rich can afford the services of a lawyer.

“Only the rich can afford to pay for their witnesses to come to court and it should not be so, this is a democracy we must not purnish the poor people unjustly but the justice system we run now is only for the rich.

“The Legal Aid System is not properly funded. Many persons can not aford the services of lawyers, therefore government needs to invest more on funding legal aids, Lawyers should be engaged in all our local governments to stand up for the poor, not just to defend them in court but to bring claims for the enjoyment of their rights to help the poor get their entitlement from the States, even things that we have promised them. “They need lawyers to stand for them. So we need lawyers all over the country. Government should engage more lawyers at the Local Governments, at the ward level, who will be representing the poor.

Explaining futher, he said the problem of the criminal justice system in Nigeria is delay, very embarrassing delay.

“One of the major reason for this delay is lack of effective pretrial case managements. Effective pre-trial case management would create a situation where the judge, the prosecutor, the witnesses and all the parties including the complainant to agree on a timetable before the trial begins.

“In Nigeria we don’t conduct effective pre-trial case managements even though the law provides for it. So it is important that all heads of courts, Attorney’s general must begin to insist that court in trial of criminal cases must conduct Pre-trial case management whereby before a suspect is arraigned for trial we have agreed on a timetable for the trial, how many witnesses we are going to call, how we are going to get the witnesses in to court and pay their expenses, those who needs protection, how they are going to be protected.

“So what Public and Private Development Center is doing in collaboration with UN embassy and INL is to begin to insist, to begin to build the capacity of the Nigerian legal system to conduct effective Pre-trial case management before trial commences.

“That is what all this process is all about and without that pre-trial all these effort to fast-track justice would not be effective.