Month: October 2006

Overview of Nigeria’s political corruption

From the BBC (a month old):

Nigeria is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Daily, low-level corruption is visible on the street; policeman extorting money from motorists to supplement their meagre wages.
But it is in the world of politics and government, where corruption has been most damaging.

Nigerian prisons

From the BBC:

The ‘notorious’ jails of Nigeria
Prisons in Nigeria are notorious, with many of the country’s 40,000 inmates crammed into massively overcrowded, dilapidated cells in old prisons.
Many inmates have never been convicted of a crime
The most shocking statistic is that some two thirds of all the prisoners in Nigeria have not been convicted.
Many have to wait for years for the case to come to court.
Inside prisons, conditions are squalid and disease is rife; tuberculosis is common.
Human rights groups say inmates often fall ill, some die from a lack of adequate medical treatment.

We visited the Jos prison and didn’t see the actual living conditions other than outside. The men we met with didn’t seem to mind or complain about their living conditions although many said they were simply condemned and that usually meant they’d spend the rest of their life in prison. Another worker told us that the prisoners could be executed at anytime without any warning, usually by a firing squad or hanging.