•Lagos C J sets free 21 prison inmates

The Lagos CJ set free the inmates during a visit she made on Wednesday in company with her colleague judges, lawyers, journalists and other stakeholders within the Justice system,  to the medium section of the Kirikiri prisons.

The Medium Security Prison until the visit of the CJ held 2452 inmates, among which 92 were convicts, 32, detainees, and 2349, Awaiting Trial Inmates. The prison however has a capacity of 1,700. This is an evidence that the prison is congested.

The CJ while making her speech during the visit admitted that the challenge of prison congestion was a recurrent  one. She expressed the regret that the Awaiting Trial inmates constituted the sizable number of the prison population.

The Lagos Judiciary head, however assured that her visit to prison the prison to exercise her statutory powers would not be one-off exercise as she promised to make a future visit for the same purpose.

Earlier, the Officer-In-Charge of the Kirikiri Medium Security Prison , Kayode Odeyemi, had expressed his happiness about the visit of the CJ.

“On my assumption in this prison about ten months ago, I made it clear to both staff and inmates of this prison that I have three cardinal objectives for the Medium Prison. These are synergy with the other arms of the Criminal Justice System for effective jail delivery which would give legal freedom to the inmates and also decongest the highly populated Medium Prison; improvement in the quality and quantity of inmates’ (food) ration, which has been done, and provision of quality medicare for the health of inmates through synergy with pharmaceutical companies, religious bodies, and non-governmental organisations, which is perfectly working.”

Odeyemi however,implored the Chief Judge to urge the executive arm of the state government to assist the prison in the “area of provision of vehicles to assist this prison in the conveyance of the inmates to and from the courts, as we are facing serious logistics challenges in the prison.”