NHRC plans new partnership to tackle prison congestion

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has announced a planned partnership with the Knights of St. Mulumba (KSM) and the Papal Knights and Medalists of Nigeria to address prison congestion and efforts to “uphold the human rights of persons deprived of liberty in Nigeria.”

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According to a statement by the Director of Corporate Affairs and External Linkages, NHRC, Fatimah Mohammed, on Thursday, the partnership was officially formalised on Monday when the National President of the Papal Knights and Supreme Knight of the KSM, Steve Adehi, led a delegation to the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.

The NHRC’s National Preventive Mechanism (NPM), Kabiru Elayo, said the NHRC will draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with KSM and the Papal Knights and Medalists of Nigeria.

Subsequently, the initiative will be rolled out across NHRC’s 36 state offices.

Planned measures

Among other prison congestion measures the collaboration seeks to deploy are “joint interventions to facilitate the review and release of persons detained for minor, bailable offences who are unable to meet bail conditions.”

The collaboration also seeks to ensure sustainable post-release mechanisms, such as establishing halfway homes, providing vocational training, and providing essential care and support packages for reintegration and to reduce recidivism.

They also plan to hold human rights capacity-building programmes for correctional officers in furtherance of Nigeria’s obligations under the Nigerian constitution and the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, and international human rights standards, including the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the “Nelson Mandela Rules”.

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Both the Executive Secretary of the NHRC, Tony Ojukwu, and Mr Adehi noted that the collaboration emanated from the “continued detention of Awaiting Trial Persons (ATPs) for minor offences or due to their inability to meet nominal bail conditions.”

Mr Ojukwu, who is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), cited documented cases of people “detained for trivial sums, including as low as ₦5,000.”

This is grave, hence the need for the collaboration, they said. Mr Ojukwu said, “Every intervention which secures liberty and restores dignity constitutes a meaningful contribution to society.”

The collaboration is the latest effort to mitigate Nigeria’s persistent prison overcrowding. There have been several in the past.

For decades, the prison congestion problem has defied many of such interventions.

In May, the ECOWAS Court of Justice ordered Nigeria to decongest its overcrowded correctional facilities after the Centre for Community Law approached the Court to challenge the prolonged detention of persons awaiting trial in correctional facilities.

In July 2025, the House of Representatives Committee on Reformatory Institutions called for an urgent infrastructural overhaul of Nigeria’s correctional centres, citing years of neglect and chronic overcrowding.

In August 2025, the panel which investigated abuses within the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS) called for the intentional adoption of non-custodial measures to reduce overcrowding in correctional centres.

The Secretary of the Panel, Uju Agomoh, speaking on the adoption of non-custodial measures to address overcrowding, said, “It is very clear that the issue of non-custodial measures is something that is supposed to help us as a nation address the overbearing population in our various custodial centres.”

During the hearing, a delegate from the NCoS, I.N. Idris, said that awaiting-trial inmates constitute more than half of the inmates in some congested custodial centres.