VP Osinbajo slams Police, Judges For Unlawful Detention of Suspects

Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has accused the
Nigerian Police and judges for keeping suspects
in prison custody longer than is legally
permissible without trial.
The Vice President made the accusation during
the opening ceremony of the two-day
Stakeholders’ Summit organized by the Lagos
Ministry of Justice, where he was represented by
Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN), Attorney-General of
the Federation and Minister of Justice.
At the summit, holding at Eko Convention
Centre, Eko Hotels in Lagos, the Vice President
said suspects are kept in prison custody for as
long as three years without being charged to
court. The situation, he explained, has left over
47,000 suspects still awaiting trial in prisons
across the country.
“As at 2017, we have 47,229 'unsentenced'
detainees awaiting trial out of a total prison
population of 67,586. It may interest you to
know that Lagos State has the highest number
of unsentenced detainees in Nigeria, according
to a recent statistic released by the National
Bureau of Statistics and Nigerian Prison Service
released in 2015,” said the Vice President.
He noted that 85.9 percent of the Lagos State
prison population is made up of yet-to-be-
charged detainees, adding that the time spent in
detention is dependent on the length of
proceedings, which are usually extended because
of incessant adjournment or lack of diligence by
investigators.
As solutions to lengthy prison custody periods,
Osinbajo called on the judiciary to embrace a
daily trial system and sanction lawyers, who
deliberately delay proceedings with the intention
of stalling trial. He urged the judges and other
relevant stakeholders in justice administration to
diligently discharge their duties.
“If we can agree that these problems are against
our collective interests as practitioners and
stakeholders, then we must make a firm
commitment to tackle the problems by changing
our attitude and standing up for what is right,”
he said.
The Vice President, who is a Senior Advocate of
Nigeria, also accused some judges of sitting for
less than three and half hours.
He said, “They will not sit on time and before
3:30pm; they would rise. Such behavior from
judges must stop.”