Islamic group condemns prison authorities over incessant jailbreaks

A non-governmental organisation, Muslim Media Watch Group of Nigeria, has condemned prison stakeholders in the country over incessant jailbreaks, which it says are putting innocent lives at great risk.

The group said that jailbreaks are becoming rampant because of the poor maintenance of Nigeria’s prisons and advocated for concrete steps to stem the tide.

In a statement by its National Coordinator, Alhaji Ibrahim Abdullahi, the group said that jailbreaks are condemnable because they are capable of jeopardising innocent lives and even properties.

“Often, when jailbreaks occur, the Federal Government and top officials of correctional centres would promise ‘heavens and earth’ to be done so that such incidents would not repeat themselves, but nothing would be done until another one occurs.

“Here we are with hundreds of prisoners finding their way illegally to the citizens having bolted away from lawful custody because of the negligence, inability, and incapacity of many officials to do what is right on time,” the group lamented.

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MMWG, therefore, called for the relocation of Ilorin prison from inside the town of Okekura to Mahdi on the outskirts of Ilorin and redesigning of the medium prison at Mahdi to Maximum Security Prison to accommodate inmates to be moved from Okekura.

It also called for the same in all parts of the country, saying “it is unfashionable to locate prisons inside city centres.”

Similarly, the MMWG declared that cross-dressing, commonly practiced by some youths nowadays, is not part of civilisation or modernization but an uncivilised behaviour punishable by God in this world and thereafter.

The group listed cross-dressers, men, and women as those who disobey their parents, and husbands who refuse to protect their wives from any abuse.

While blaming all vices plaguing Nigerian youths on bad parenting, Abdullahi particularly said, “Any Muslim dressing like a woman or any Muslim woman putting on men’s wears are both agents of the devil who would not receive blessings of Allah here and in the hereafter.”