Nigeria prisons, is there hope for the prisoner within your walls?

Do innocent Nigerians ever get away from the poison that is Nigerian prisons?

In other countries, there are stories of prisoners who come up for parole after they must have been well behaved within the prison walls for five years and then they are released to start a new life after the correctional facility has made them better people.

I personally have encountered prisoners who beg me for money because they don’t

want to steal but don’t know the way out and from the little I have, I help them survive one more day, perhaps their day of breakthrough will arrive soon, that they don’t miss it.

I choose to be their helper for one day. That is what I can do for now.

In Nigeria, the stories I have heard told are those of how young innocent boys go into the prison innocent and come out a hardened criminal.

There are many stories of wrongfully accused people who are serving time in prison and yet have not been convicted. How can we help this group of people?

What can be done to prepare these set of people, the ones trapped in a prison system for life outside the prison so they can get skills that help them survive outside the prison walls?

Photo credit: Excerpt of Fisayo's investigation in Nigerian prisons

Can an Interswitch build a computer room within the prison so that one young man or young woman within the prison walls can learn how to code, learn to write and make money that is placed in the bank accounts for them till they leave the prison walls?

I have a romantic view of prison from watching “The Shawshank Redemption” where an account was wrongfully imprisoned. He did not kill his wife. Someone else did but he was sentenced to prison for a crime he did not commit and a criminal walked free. This man was productive even though he was imprisoned. Another story dear to my heart is “The Green Mile”, another story where justice was not served but the good kind of overcame evil in this story.

When I read the account by Fisayo Soyombo, who went undercover behind prison walls pretending to be a prisoner, my eyes were opened to the condition of the Nigerian prisons where sometimes a prisoner is exchanged for an innocent and the prisoner is set free while the innocent takes his place. All the paperwork supports the fact that the criminal is in jail but an innocent man has taken his place.

How so we solve this problem? What can we do to make things better?

There are so many organizations willing to help train these people. Free people who were wrongly arrested and incarcerated and reform them before releasing back to society. There are also organisations interested in helping training men and women to have marketable skills before being released back into society so that they can be useful to themselves and their community.

Dear Nigerian prison, help us help you. If we think the system is hopeless and that we can do nothing then that is what it will be. But if we put one foot in front of the other and do something kind daily, we can make a difference in the life of one person if not in the life of many.