The Federal Government has placed a ban on the use of mobile phones in all the prisons by inmates and by prison officials. it has also asked the Nigerian Prison authorities to seize all mobile phones from inmates within 30 days.
The Federal Government has placed a ban on the use of mobile phones in all the prisons by inmates and by prison officials. it has also asked the Nigerian Prison authorities to seize all mobile phones from inmates within 30 days.
This was made public by the interior minister, Abba Moro on Saturday in Abuja during a meeting with senior officers of the prison service.
He made it clear that no inmate should be allowed to wear his/her own choice of shoes or clothes as it is practiced presently, “no matter highly placed they may be.”
Moro said, “I have visited some prisons in other countries as the Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; Nobody, no matter highly placed you are, you don’t come to prison with your phones, not even the minister of Interior as the supervising minister over the prisons. So, why are you an exception?
“Henceforth, no matter who you are including myself, that 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 as they walk into prisons, they 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.”
The minister who warned the Nigeria Prison Service about complying with the directive, adding that he will deal with any officer founding on the wrong side of the law.