{"id":69259,"date":"2025-06-28T21:38:57","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T21:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=69259"},"modified":"2025-06-28T21:38:57","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T21:38:57","slug":"over-7600-inmates-freed-as-government-moves-to-decongest-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/06\/28\/over-7600-inmates-freed-as-government-moves-to-decongest-prisons\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 7,600 Inmates Freed as Government Moves to Decongest Prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In a nationwide effort to ease overcrowding in custodial centres, no fewer than 7,646 inmates have been released from correctional facilities across Nigeria between January 2022 and June 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The releases, facilitated by federal and state authorities, chief judges, and non-governmental organisations, reflect a growing push for prison decongestion.<\/p>\n<p>According to data obtained by our correspondent, 707 inmates were freed in 2022, 4,678 in 2023, 1,843 in 2024, and 418 as of mid-2025.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the beneficiaries were inmates unable to pay fines, with the initiative supported by corporate donations amounting to N585 million under various corporate social responsibility (CSR), programmes.<\/p>\n<p>Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, said the initiative has saved the government about N1 billion in inmate feeding costs.<\/p>\n<p>Despite these efforts, overcrowding persists. Latest figures from the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), show that 81,746 inmates are currently held in facilities designed for just over 50,000.<\/p>\n<p>Of these, 54,013 are awaiting trial, many facing serious charges such as armed robbery, murder, and culpable homicide.<\/p>\n<p>NCoS spokesperson, Abubakar Umar, revealed that the Federal Government is constructing two new correctional centres-one in Rivers State and another in the Federal Capital Territory, each with a capacity of 6,000 inmates, to address infrastructural gaps and modernise the prison system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata &nbsp; In a nationwide effort to ease overcrowding in custodial centres, no fewer than 7,646 inmates have been released from correctional facilities across Nigeria between January 2022 and June 2025. The releases, facilitated by federal and state authorities, chief judges, and non-governmental organisations, reflect a growing push for prison decongestion. According [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":69260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69261,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69259\/revisions\/69261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}