22 Ex-Boko Haram Members Sit For SSCE

The Nigerian Correctional Service has disclosed that 22 former members of the dreaded Boko Haram terrorist group have sat for the Senior School Certificate Examination.

The service explained that the ex-insurgents participated in the NCS deradicalisation programme as part of their rehabilitation.

Disclosing this to journalists in Abuja on Wednesday, Comptroller-General of NCS, Ja’afaru Ahmed said that about 2, 745 condemned inmates are awaiting execution in various correctional facilities across the country.

The CG, who was represented by the NSC spokesman, Francis Enobore admonished state governors to sign their execution warrant.

He attributed the congestion in some facilities to the refusal by some state governors to sign the execution warrant of the condemned men and women.

“Governors are not willing to sign death sentences of condemned inmates, neither are they ready to commute their death sentence to life imprisonment,” Ahmed lamented.

The NCS boss stated that the Administration of Criminal Justice Act was meant to hasten the trial of suspects and enhance the decongestion of crowded correctional facilities.

He noted that about 24 states had domesticated the ACJA, adding that the Act would help in decongesting correctional facilities “as some of its provisions empower correctional centres to reject inmates so that facilities are not overcrowded.”

The CG further pointed out that the NCS had developed the Corrections Information Management System to capture inmates’ biometric, access the length of remand and pre-trial detention proceedings in the correction system