In numbers: How Nigerian prisons lock up babies

Data tells a heart breaking, and yet, an under-reported story

250 :the number of children reportedly in Giwa military Barracks, one of the 239 prisons in Nigeria in 2016.

18 months: the limit that a child of a female detainee may stay and breastfeed with the mother.

0.019% : the percentage of women and children of 55,935 inmates in prison in 2013

240: The number of detainees who died in military Borno Prisons and were secretly buried .

29 OF THEM WERE CHILDREN AND BABIES.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Many Nigerian parents claim: poverty, economic recession, lack of social policy regarding childcare as the reasons why their children are not being looked after.

When these factors come together, it becomes fertile ground for juvenile incarceration to occur.

And this is not the entire picture. Children can also become incarcerated themselves by being born to inmates, by committing crimes like prostitution, from forced incarceration in war zones, and if you are in Lagos State, a child could get there by hawking.

STREET HAWKING IN LAGOS: A TALE OF INEQUALITIES

In July 2016, the Lagos state government resuscitated the Lagos State Street Trading and Illegal Market Prohibition Law 2003 with Ban on Street Hawking and making it an offence for traders to hawk on the streets.

It imposes a fine of N90, 000 to both the hawker and the offender.

During the recent visit of the Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Funmilayo Atilade to the Badagry Prison, a 14-year-old boy, Samuel (pseudo name) said that he was picked up by a task force for hawking beef sausage, popularly known as Gala.

“I am from the East. I came to stay with my distant relative. I was made to start hawking.

“My people do not know that I am here,” he said, adding: “I want to go back home”.

Samuel is one of the numerous children that are incarcerated in Badagry prisons, where the Chief Justice of Lagos State, recently released 80 children who had been committed there for different offences, and awaiting judgement.

But when bail for an offence is 90 times the amount of a daily wage of the entire house hold, what hope for Samuel that he will ever be released?

While speaking, Deputy Comptroller, Oyeniran Famuwagun, informed the Lagos CJ that the Badagry prison was built to hold 320 inmates but is currently occupied by 584 inmates.

“The prison has a population of 584 inmates; with 389 convicted male and 195 awaiting trial males, alongside 70 prison staff members.

At the end of the day, 80 underaged inmates were set free. While they jubilated, the other children wailed loudly, tears and mucus rolling down their sad faces.

In the midst of the confusion a boy fell and remained immobile on the dusty ground, too weak to move.

“Help me,” he said in a feeble voice wracked with hunger.

“Don’t mind him,” a prison warder said, “He has already been convicted.”