We Need To Decentralise Prisons – Gov Masari

Katsina State governor Aminu Bello Masari has stressed the need to urgently decentralise the nation’s prison system insisting that the time was long overdue. Speaking yesterday when he recieved the assistant comptroller of prisons in charge of Zone B, Usman Yakubu Musa, Masari said, “Just as we are clamouring for state police, we need to be thinking of states and local governments’ ownership of prisons so as to address the issue of decongestion. “It is time we looked at how states and local governments can provide prisons to deal with certain issues,” Masari said insisting that centralisation was one of the main problems of Nigeria. He urged the authorities of Nigerian prisons to engage the national assembly so as to find lasting solution to deplorable conditions of prisons in the country adding that his recent visit to Katsina prisons showed him clearly that the prisons could not reform inmates. “What I saw was alarming. The situation is horrible. That place cannot reform anybody,” Masari enthused. The governor however pledged to provide tools for the training of inmates in prisons across the state. Source:Leadership