Agricultural activities in Nigeria Prison service(NPS)has appreciated by 20.87% in 2016 BusinessDay investigations revealed.
This has been largely attributed to increase in government intervention, mainly coming from provision of farm inputs like high breed seeds and fertilisers.
Confirming this development to BusinessDay, the service Public Relations Officer, Francis Enobore said apart from Federal Government intervention on inputs, “the service decided to upscale agricultural activities by cultivating larger pieces of land.”
Enobore explained that 2016 has seen a bountiful harvest from various prison farms “secondly everything depends on the general yields from the farming season.2016 seem to be a more productive.”
Revenue generated from sales of farm produce in 2015 was at N8,210,000 and reached N10,376,000 in 2016.
The Prisons’ spokesperson highlighted the steps taken by the NPS in tackling congestion across prisons formations in the country.
“As a matter of fact,most of our prisons that are located in urban centres that are already far above their capacity in terms of the present inmates population we intend to do a relocation where it is not possible to immediately increase the number of prisoners association cells,” he said.
The Service recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the minister of interior and the executive governor of Akwa Ibom state with a view to relocating Uyo prison. Enobore noted that more are still coming on board. There is a discussion with the Lagos state government to relocate Ikoyi prison and many other prisons that are located in urban centres.
“Presently we have a total inmate population of 69,304 18/4/2017. You know this population is never static. Our prison population oscillate between 69,000 to 71,000 sometimes it builds up to 72,000. This is not to say it is experiencing a drop in population in the north east we have 9,133 inmates,” Enobore said.
