The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has said that over 4,000 inmates in various custodial centres across the country will be freed as part of the ministry’s decongestion programme.
Tunji-Ojo stated this during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Wednesday.
He said, “I am a person that deals with figures and data. I plan. We looked at the whole system and found out there were about 4,000 inmates who were unable to pay fines. We are able to separate that. We worked with some agencies and NGOs to sort that out. We are working on that. At least we are able to get 4,000 inmates out of correctional centres.
“We have over 77,000 inmates in prisons across the country. More than 80% of the inmates are state offenders. We are working with the state government to sort it out. We have set up a committee to look into this and I assure you we will come up with verifiable steps and release an action plan in due course.”
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Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo added that all passports backlog have been printed. He said they have cleared 204000 passports backlog since he assumed duty.
“I have to apologize to Nigerians that we were unable to fulfill our promise of delivering passports in two weeks. But we have achieved this in three weeks. I am urging Nigerians to go to passport offices to collect their passports. I have given a marching order on this that all passports should be released as soon as possible.”
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