The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, has called for immediate decongestion of all the Correctional Centres in the country as a measure to ensure that the Coronavirus disease, does not find its way into any of the Centres.

He said the ministry would make a representation to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on the need for state governors and Chief Judges to consider granting amnesty to deserving inmates.

Aregbesola made the call during an emergency meeting in Abuja on how to manage the Custodial Centres of the Nigerian Correctional Service during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He stated that the meeting was convened in response to the outcome of the meeting of the Presidential Task Force for the Control of COVID-19, noting that the safety of inmates, staff of the Nigeria Correctional Service and all Nigerians was of great concern to the government.

The minister, according to a statement by the Director of Press in the ministry, Mohammed Manga, stressed that the need to ensure that the pandemic did not get into any of the custodian centres.

Aregbesola, therefore, called on the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice state Chief Judges, governors and other stakeholders in the justice sector to immediately identify measures to be taken for quick decongestion of the custodial centres across the country.

According to him, the number of those in the custodial centres across the country calls for quick response as they are more vulnerable to infection.

He added that the situation was further compounded by the huge number of Awaiting Trial Persons, which he said, was over 70 per cent of the inmates in the nation’s holding facilities.

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He called for an urgent need to find a way of trying the cases of the ATPs in the country to overcome the challenge of space in order to reduce the possibility of the virus getting into the facilities.

Earlier in his remarks, the Controller General of Corrections, Ja’afaru Ahmed, said that the country had a total of 244 custodial centres, 139 of which were main Custodial Centres and 85 Satellite Centres with a total of 74,127 inmates, including 1,450 female.

According to him, only 21, 901 have been convicted while 52,226 are awaiting trial.

The Controller General added that overcrowded facilities posed a serious threat to the inmates at this time of the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic if adequate steps were not taken to address the situation.

Also in his remarks, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami called for proper profiling of all inmates in the various facilities across the country with a view to having a joint arrangement with the governors and states Chief Judges for a speedy trial.

On his own part, the Chief Judge of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Ishaq Bello, called for constitutional amendment to remove the Nigeria Correctional Service from the exclusive legislative list to concurrent list.

He said that would aid easy administration of criminal justice system and decongestion of custodial facilities across the nation.