Comrade Abba Moro is the incumbent Interior Minister. In this interview with Ise-Oluwa Ige, he speaks about a number of issues including acute dearth of fi re stations in Nigeria, why the present crop of prison officials can't tackle jailbreaks, government's diffi culty in coming up with the accurate figure of illegal immigrants in the country and Boko Haram killings, among others. Excerpts
What is the state of our prison today?
The Nigeria Prison Service is essentially a rehabilitation centre. Notwithstanding the insinuations sometimes very wrongly portrayed in the international media about our prisons, I can say today that if you properly appreciate the kind of prisons we inherited from our colonial masters and if you equally appreciate the fact that successive governments have taken the existence of prisons for granted because we never had this national security challenge that we have today, we never had these high profile prisoners that we have today in prison. All that we have had in the past were low level profile criminals such as armed bandits but with the insurgency of Boko Haram and militancy across the country, we now have within the confines of our prisons high profile persons. That has made the prisons very vulnerable to attacks by their peers and contemporaries that were not arrested.
Unfortunately, I am sorry to say that our prisons officials are ill-equipped to tackle this problem because the Nigerian Prison Service was prepared to handle the ordinary criminal which it usually would contend. I know that we have the onerous responsibility of being the holding institution for many other agencies and governments. The Lagos State government, for instance, can wake up one day on one side of the bed and horse and cart away 50 women on the street and take them to court that they are prostitutes and kept in the prison and leave the responsibility of maintaining them to the Federal Government. The Benue State government can equally go around and say we suspect these people to be Fulanis who are killing our people and plant them in prison.
So we have the unfortunate responsibility of being a holding institution for all sorts of crimes and criminal. Whether they are brought by the state or individuals, the Federal Prison Service takes responsibility because the Sunday Mirror www.nationalmirroronline.net 15 prison is in the exclusive list of the constitution. Keeping and maintaining prisoners is on the exclusive responsibility of the prison service but unfortunately we do not have a corresponding exclusive power over funding so we must make do with what we have but within the available resources, we will try to do the very best that we can.
I can proudly inform you that about 50 of our prison inmates are attending the National Open University, about 90 are registered to write the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination, and about 690 have been effectively resettled into the larger society upon completion of their term. 109 have been trained in vocational skills and have acquired such relevant skills and at the end of it, the prison service provides them with the necessary working tools to practise the trade that they have learnt in the prison. About 145 have been trade tested in various fields so that when they come out of the prison they will be able to effectively integrate in the larger society. In order to effectively manage the attitude of prisoners, the Nigerian Prison Service periodically trains welfare officers that take care of the welfare of prisoners.
The Ministry of Interior is aware of the fact that for its workforce to excel and have a positive attitude to government work, certainly welfare becomes paramount. To this end, the NSCDC, NPS and NIS have an arrangement to partner with a private firm that supplies vehicles for their officers to pay at their convenience. I commissioned 500 set of vehicles late last year for the NPS, NSCDC and we are in the process of expanding the arrangement to cover everybody, including motorcycles in the ministry if the need arises.
Are you considering the possibility of having states owned prisons to curtail the pressure on the prisons service?
The prison service is an exclusive element in the constitution. We have repeatedly indicated the preparedness of government to introduce the private partnership model in the Nigerian Prison. We have had visits from our friends in South Africa, Britain and we are tinkering with the possibility of decentralising the prison service to ensure efficiency. But until that is done and the relevant sections of the constitution are amended, the prison remains in the exclusive list.
What efforts is the Interior Ministry playing in checking the increasing cases of Fulani herdsmen and farmers crises, particularly in Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba and Plateau states?
The crises arising between the Fulani herdsmen and the farmers constitute a worrisome situation in the country. But let me say here that it is not true that it is within the purview of the Ministry of Interior to address the relationship between the herdsmen and the farmers. If I must mention, it is in the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture. But that is not the issue here.
We have a situation on our hands which is an unfortunate development. Only on Tuesday, I had cause to travel to Agatu LGA in Benue State where we had several deaths as a result of attacks by Fulani herdsmen on over five communities and it was a very sorry experience giving the number of people who were killed. However, government is trying to create a separate route as grazing grounds for the herdsmen and once they confine themselves to those areas, it will minimise frequent crises between the herdsmen and the farmers.
What is the Ministry of Interior doing to ensure that fi re service is effi cient not only in the FCT but the entire country? The Federal Fire Service is one institution that has been tossed about too often, the service was until recently in the Ministry of Works before it was transferred to the Ministry of Interior. In the process, arguments have been made as to whether the Federal Fire Service should be a mere regulatory body and not giving service. In the process, attempts have been made to transfer some of the assets of the Federal Fire Service to state governments where they are allocated.
It is sad to inform you that because of the neglect of the service by successive administrations, you have the presence of the Federal Fire Service in very few places; Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt and Kaduna. Meanwhile, the system of the fire service generally is that it should not be more than a particular distance; 2.5 kilometres from disaster scenes and response time should not be more than five minutes otherwise incalculable damage would have been done by the time rescue teams arrive.
It is in this administration that we are trying to look at legal framework that guides the operations of the Federal Fire Service. Right now, there is a proposal before the National Assembly for the amendment of the Federal Fire Service Act to include all the desires of the agency to be able to effectively render services. That is the reason why we are now contemplating starting up with 227 fire stations across the country hoping that with the stations properly equipped we would have reduced response time. But until that is done, I am very sorry that we will have to put up with what we have now.
Unfortunately too, we have a situation where private organisations buy fire fighting equipment without corresponding training in the discharge of the responsibility in fighting fire. Fighting fire is like being a medical doctor, unless you continually update yourself you may not function effectively because it is a hazardous enterprise. I am hoping that within the next few months or a year if we finish the procurement process and the 227 fire stations are built and equipped with that state of the art equipment, we will be ready to properly fight fire situations across the country.
How have you addressed the issue of cash for employment that has rocked your ministry and its agencies and what is your view on the crisis between the NSCDC and the police that resulted in the death of men of the NSCDC in Lagos?
It is people outside the ministry who have contrived and urged unsuspecting Nigerians to register with them and get employment. I am not aware that any such employment has been accepted. I have made a presentation to the National Assembly on this issue and I tell you that the NSCDC has made several arrests in this regard and many of them have been prosecuted. Some of them have been given various jail terms of five and seven years.
Over 100 of them have been handed over to ICPC and EFCC for prosecution. We are making efforts in the ministry to arrest the situation. None of the persons that have been mentioned except one is a staff of the ministry or its agencies. I can assure you that if we have any confirmation of a staff of the ministry or its agencies involved in the scam, certainly such staff will not only be dismissed but handed over to security agencies.
You will recall also that I have encouraged people who insinuate that they have been duped to come forward, reveal such officers either in the ministry or its agencies so that I can get hold of them and in the process promised as incentive to grant such people automatic employment but nobody has come forward. I have assured that I will give such persons absolute confidentiality.
What is the cost implication for the proposed ICT security infrastructure for the borders and how many illegal immigrants have you repatriated so far?
The last organisation that submitted quotation which we find expedient was the Chinese Nigeria based company ZTE and Haiwaei conglomerate. We are in the process of certifying which of these can be awarded the contract that is affordable but it was within the range of $2.6 million which they proposed and we hope that if we have the means we will be able to execute the project. But I am happy to inform you that the American government in an attempt to support Nigeria in the fight against terror has also sent some representatives in the ministry and we are in discussion with them. We are in the process of collaborating with the American State Department with a view to deploying an advanced technology to secure our borders. So that cost that I mentioned now, certainly will no longer apply by the time we remove certain components, that of the requirement for border security from it as a result of possible acceptance of the advances by the American government. At the appropriate time, you will be informed accordingly on the cost implication.
As at the last count, about 19,000 illegal immigrants have been eased out of this country as a result of intensified activities of the NIS to ensuring that illegal immigrants that are criminally-minded are not accommodated in Nigeria. But what we intend to actually do is to find a way of actually identifying and having a proper data base of how many immigrants that we have in the country. Unfortunately, we don't have accurate figure because of the porosity of our borders, wrongful interpretation of the ECOWAS protocol of movement and the numerous borders.
That is why when I mentioned the construction of control post, some persons went to town with this idea of perimeter fencing and the rest of them. But what is the big deal about perimeter fencing. The almighty America has even concrete fence on its borders with Mexico on the southern flanks. The powerful Israel has a brick wall that prevents people from crossing into their borders. I think that the extraordinary problems we have today certainly require extraordinary solutions. If we are having criminally minded persons that are infiltrating our borders and causing mayhem, it becomes necessary if we have the means to put perimeter fencing to be able to regulate the movement of people across our borders. I don't see anything bad in that. As it is now, our primary responsibility which we have started in earnest is to first of all identify these border routes because in the desert North, we have a very herculean problem of even knowing which is route.
How does the Prisons Service cope with the issue of pregnant prisoners?
In the prison, whether male or female, you are a criminal but I must say with due respect to the women that we have a few female prisoners in our prisons. Of course, we have problems with the female prisoners. Some of them who are there and have given birth probably got there with pregnancies.
There has been this illusion that some of them got pregnant there but it's not true. These are people who committed crimes with pregnancy. So the dilemma which we find ourselves is what do you do with the child? The mother is a convict, she is in prison, she has given birth, so you cannot take the child from her and you cannot free her because she has a child. In any case, it is not within the power of the ministry or prison service to free a person. We have a responsibility to take in but we don't have to take out. It is the same court that brings them that can take out. If they don't and as long as they have not exhausted their term, we will keep them.
We are working on a proposal to ease the congestion in the prison. I have set up two committee to look at the prison situation and make recommendations. I have also directed the prisons service to categorise prisoners into offences and the appropriate punishment that they attract. Consequent upon that, I have received the approval of Mr. President to constitute an inter-ministerial to look at the various categories of crimes in our prisons and the punishments and also look at alternative punishment so that we can decongest our prisons rather than the traditional way of saying the Ministry of Justice should decongest. I can assure you that before the end of the year these committees will submit their reports and the ministry will act accordingly.
National Mirror