Moro bans telephone usage, indecent dressing in prisons

By Tobias Lengnan Dapam

Minister of Interior, Comrade Abba Moro, has banned Nigerian Prison officials from the use of telephones in prisons.

Moro, who gave the order at the weekend in Abuja, during an interactive meeting with the senior officers of the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS), also ordered the prison authorities tore cover all telephones from the prisoners across the prison formations in the country within thirty days.

The order also decried indecent dressing by the inmates, saying henceforth, no inmate should be allowed to wear their choice of clothes or shoe, no matter how highly placed the inmate are.

“I have visited some prisons in other country as the Minister of the federal republic of Nigeria, Nobody, no matter how highly placed is allowed to come to prison with his phones, not even the minister of Interior or the supervising minister of the prisons. So, why are you an exception?

“Henceforth, no matter who you are, including myself, nobody goes into prison with telephones. And so,as you are going from here, create a meeting platform where all the officers that work in the prisons submit their phones and collect them when they close.

“Secondly, it means that you have one month to recover all the phones in the custody of inmates across the prison formations. “Within one month, all prison formation must recover all telephones from inmates. Don’t forget that I will know if you fail to do this because we have various agencies in Nigeriathat tracks telephone calls.

Commenting on the recent attack on Koton-Karfe prison in Kogi state, the Minister wondered the failure of the prisons intelligence unit and the armed squad which he said has led to the two attacks within two years.

“A situation whereby It is established that a prison officer connived with external forces to take a sizeable number of AK47 into the prison and the only sanctions you can give to such officer is to transfer him, and so Acting CG I want you to investigate that matter and report back to me within two weeks.”

He warned the officers to” either demonstrate your capacity or honourably resign because there are many Nigerians looking for job, just say that you are no longer capable of doing this job and get out and we will get committed Nigerians to fill the vacancies, and I mean everything I am saying.”