By Jaja Clinton

Whenever a new legislation is enacted to replace an old scheme with a new scheme, as legislative drafting lawyers, we are trained to explicitly provide a section in the new law to be named “TRANSITIONAL PROVISIONS”.

This a section of the new legislation that spells out the period of transition and the modalities for transition (in clear step-by-step details).

Beyond drafting the legislation, ideally series of re-orientation training workshops ought to be organised for the officials whom are supposed to implement the new legislation.

I recall that as a member of the team of lawyers that drafted the 2006/2007 Lagos State Domestic Violence Agency, our team of lawyers embarked on orientation training of all the police officers of Lagos State. We did it on a weekly basis from one police station to another.

In addition, we provide the tools (notebooks, pens, and crime diaries for recording reports of domestic violence) for the police officers to utilise in carrying out this new task.

Before the enactment of the said legislation, police officers were in the habit of dismissing any woman who can to their police station to report incidents of domestic violence. The police officers would reprimand such complainants that they should go home and settle with their husbands (always making sure to add to the hearing of the complainant that they too, the police officers were married and had their own family matters to deal with). There was even a lewd joke amongst police officers, which they would also add to the hearing of the complainants: “when you and your husband dey do the thing (marital sex), eeh dey sweet una, Na now una get WAHALA, una come dey remember police Abi?

It appears that the management and leadership of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) failed to organise a series of re-orientation training workshops for its staff after the name was changed from “Prisons” to “correctional centres”.

It appears that their idea of the change was to change their letter headed papers, sign boards and the lettering on their vans and trucks and official cars!!!

It appears that the law of unintended consequences is now in full-fledged operations amongst the officials of the Nigerian Correctional Centres.

We can imply this from the recent reported incident at the Nigerian Correctional Centre at Delta State, where we were told that some immates on death row were allowed to sneak out of the said correctional centres and commit the crime of kidnapping and extortion and returned to the same correctional centre to share their loot.

What were the said officials of the Nigerian Correctional Centre thinking?

It appears that they were thinking that the crime of kidnapping and extortion are lesser crime than murder which is the initial offences that got those inmates on death row in the first place!!!

In their warped thinking, the said officials may have convinced themselves that they have succeeeded in “rehabilitating” such death row inmates, if instead of committing murder, they have descended to committing kidnapping and extortion!!!

And the said officials of the Nigerian Correctional Centre must have praised themselves for a “rehabilitation” job done so well that, these death row inmates, were set free and by themselves committed the said lesser crimes and instead of running away from the scene of their crimes, they voluntarily returned back to their jail cells inside the said correctional centre!!!

That shows the difference between prisons and correctional centres!!!

In those days, nobody leaves any Nigerian prison and would ever want to return to prison because of the squalor and infectious diseases that are rife there!!!

So it is unprecedented that inmates on death row could temporarily be released from Correctional Centre and voluntarily accept to return back!!!

Instead of penalising the said officials of the Nigerian Correctional Centre who temporarily released those inmates, we need to call them to as lecturers and resource persons to conduct a series of “train-the-trainer” workshops for all the staff of the Nigerian Correctional Service to teach them their methods of “rehabilitation”!!!

In the 1990s, the Nigerian prisons had a fearsome and undignified reputation!!!

It was still regarded as a thing of social stigma for anyone in the neighbourhood or community to be an ex-convict who had served time in prison!!!

In our neighbourhood, there was only one such person whom we all knew and he was shunned and avoided, nobody would allow him to date their sister or visit their homes. He could not find any decent job because his reputation preceded him, so he ended up as a Disc Jockey (DJ) playing for birthday parties, wake-keeps etc.!!!

Now that they are no longer called prisons, even Evans the kidnapper is a second year University student while serving his time in prison, sorry I meant to say correctional centre!!!

Nowadays, which criminal would not like to stay within the four-walls of a prison, sorry I meant to say correctional centre, where police officers and cultists do not have access to them!!!

here is supposed to be a transition