The House of Representatives on Tuesday asked the Ministry of Interior and the Nigerian Correctional Service to install Solar Powered Biometric Capturing Devices to capture full details of persons in the facilities across the country to avert jailbreaks.
This followed the adoption of a motion presented by a lawmaker from Anambra State, Godwin Emeka, at the plenary in Abuja.
The lawmaker had in his presentation recalled that former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 signed an Act which changed the name of the Nigerian Prison Service to Nigerian Correctional Service.
He noted that since the name was changed to Nigerian Correctional Service which broke the service into Custodial and non-Custodial service, more than 1000 inmates had escaped from the facilities across the country.
Emeka lamented that the jailbreaks are becoming a recurring decimal, a national embarrassment, and a security threat to the country.
He said: “Despite the change in nomenclature, critical infrastructure like provision of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), among others are not installed to meet modern challenges in the security ecosystem.
“We are concerned that the absence of modern technology equipment makes it impossible for the staff of the facilities to account for the number of escapees each time there is a jailbreak.
“Worried that if urgent steps are not taken to install modern security gadgets and equipment, like installation of Solar Powered Biometric Capturing devices for an on-the-spot capturing of inmates at the point of admission into the facilities, incessant jailbreaks will continue unabated with the attendant number of escapees unaccounted for.”
In his ruling, the Speaker of the House, Tajudeen Abbas mandated the Committees on Reformatory Institutions, Interior and Legislative Compliance to ensure compliance and report within four weeks for further legislative action.