The Prison and Hospital Ministry of the Redeem Christian Church of God (RCCG) has said that 75% of prison inmates in Nigeria are innocent.
The National Chairman of RCCG Prison & Hospital Ministry, Pastor Ariyo Popoola, disclosed this at the 2025 conference of the ministry, held at the weekend at the RCCG Camp, Ogun State.
He attributed the problem to corruption, which he said has eaten deep into the fabric of every sector in the country, including both the public and private sectors.
Popoola noted that many of the people in the prison were arrested and charged to court without investigation, accusing personnel of the Nigeria Police of being manipulative and corrupt for illegal arrest, unnecessary extortion of their victims.
He said, "when we say that 75% of people in the prison are innocent, how do we arrive at that number, go and check how many people have been charged appropriately. For instance, there are several people charged for armed robbery that are awaiting DPP advice for about five years, and by the time the advice comes, the DPP will tell them that the person isn't an armed robber. It's either they say he is in possession of unlawful firearms and you have kept that person for five years, is that person not an innocent, and at the end of the day, the DPP investigation says there was no due investigations, that the same documents that the government supplied revealed that nothing of such can even be related to the person. That means you have wasted his life for five years, so what are we talking about" .
"Also, there are people who are in the prison for seven years on trial for cases and at the end of the day, they will be discharged and acquainted, go and put all these sematic together and see the numbers of people that you can investigate and come back to tell me how many percent you get, that is one".
"Number two, how many people have been detained for trials for ten years and at the end of the day, they will say they released because they don't have evidence to prosecute them. Is that person not an innocent? Now, after all these, go and check in a year how many conviction do we have in our courts, what about the rest in the prison, are they not innocent? So, I'm telling you emphatically that you can check. In the last ten years go and check the numbers of convicted inmates, check the numbers of people under trials, check the number of people that have been discharged and acquainted and number of people that government will just say let us decongest them, evaluate them, put it side by side and people that the Appeal Court said the conviction is rubbish, go and check them and put it together whether I'm telling you the truth or not".
He declared that the system should be blamed for being porous without hesitation, calling on the government to provide adequate infrastructure.
"I blamed this on the whole system, because to me we don't have any system in Nigeria. Justice delayed is Justice denied. Why should you arrest someone in a civil society without investigation. In America and UK, before you can be arrested they have investigated you, the proves are already on ground. But in Nigeria, they will pick you on mere allegations and after the arrest, they begin the investigation. Investigating what? And after their investigation, they will now be manipulative looking for technicalities to jail that person by all means, that is unfair. Do you know what it takes to bail somebody in this country? You can't go to police to report that someone is trying to cheat you and they should come and interfere or there is a case I want you to get involved, before they will go and invite that person, you will pay, you will pay for biro, pay for exercise books, pay for dettol."
"In this country, if police arrest somebody yesterday and detained him, go there the following today, you may not see the IPO in charge of the case for three days and the person will be languishing in the cell, because the IPO is running after another case. Is that a system? May be one day, the IGP coming they will just carry everybody without proper conduct drive them to nearby magistrate court and get a detention warrants that has got many people in prison no file or nothing of whatsoever".
On his part, the National Overseer of RCCG, Pastor Sunday Akande who was represented by Pastor Akin John called for infrastructural development of correctional facilities and hospitals in the country.
He noted that creating enabling environment for the inmates is pertinent, lamenting that primary healthcare must be in place as the ways it was.
Responding to the statistics given that 75% of people in prison are innocent the spokesperson for correctional centers in Ogun Superintendent Odukoya Owolola declared that the word innocent isn't in his purvey to decide who Is innocent and who isn't, adding that they are just keeper.
He also noted that the only area where the new correctional Act has allowed so many interventions is the restorative of justice system, where two people is having issues among them, is for them to call the party involved and settled out court.
He declared that they don't have any contributions rather when they bring them they keep them as long as there is a valid warrant that brings them correctional centers their jobs is to take them and when they are ready to take them they give them warrant again to attest that they have been taken which is the only evidence from the correctional centers.
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