Seventy five inmates of the Kirikiri Minimum and Maximum Prisons were on Tuesday freed by the Chief Justice of Lagos State, Justice Ayotunde Phillips.
Fortune smiled on the beneficiaries of the gesture as they were release by Justice Phillips while on an inspection tour of the detention facilities ahead of her retirement.
Out of the 75 inmates, 71 were freed at the Kirikiri Medium Prison by the judge who is to retire from the bench on 25th July 2014. Three of the inmates were also released from the Maximum Prison, while one of the inmates is a woman.
Phillips had vowed, while being screened for the position by the State House of Assembly, to decongest the prisons in the state. She said that her action was part of her desire to fulfil the promise.
“I really don’t know what more I could have done as a person to reduce the number of awaiting-trial inmates,” Phillip said.
“They form the bulk of the number of persons in our prisons today, and we need to go back to the drawing board to see how we can reduce it. And this is why we came up with various reforms in the criminal justice system, particularly the introduction of the bail guidelines. It’s all to decongest our prisons.”
In his reaction, the Deputy Controller at the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, Olumide Tinuoye, commended the CJ but lamented that the facility still had 389 awaiting trial inmates.
