The federal government has approved the purchase of 350 operational vehicles from local manufacturers for the Nigerian Prisons Service, NPS.
This followed a memo presented by the Minister of Interior, Gen. Abdulraman Dambazzau (rtd) to the Federal Executive Council, FEC.
Dambaazzau who was in company of his colleagues, Mr. Babatunde Fashola from the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing and Mr. Ibe Kachikwu from Petroleum Resources, while briefing newsmen at the end of FEC meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja on Wednesday, said that development was part of the effort to strengthen the criminal justice system in Nigeria.
He lamented a situation where many prison inmates and even the accused had been incarcerated wrongly for lack of vehicles and other logistics to take them to court for fair hearing.
He minister further explained that about 65,000 prisoners with about 70 percent persons awaiting trial had suffered unjustly in detentions for lack of vehicles to take them to about 5,022 courts which were scattered in the country. Dambaazzau however stated that the vehicles would be procured from local manufacturers.
He said: “In our efforts to strengthen criminal justice system and to also contribute towards decongesting the system, we presented a memo for the procurement of 320 operational vehicles for the prison service at the cost of N3.5 billion.
According to him, the procurement is from local manufacturers, assemblies and vendors with Nigeria and the effort is to follow through government policy to ensure that most of the procurement of the equipment and such vehicles are done locally. That will also provide opportunity for job creation and things like that.
