Prison Probes Alleged Bribery, Drug Smuggling In Akwa Ibom

Family members, friends and associates trying to check on their inmates at the Medium Custodial Centre (MCC), along the Wellington Bassey Way (Barracks Road), Uyo, the Akwa Ibom state capital, have alleged extortion by the prison officials before being allowed to see the detainees.

This comes as the Controller of Corrections, in the state, Mr. Frank Okonkwo, admitted knowledge of bribery allegations, assuring that the matter was already being investigated.

“Before you are allowed to bring food or see the inmates, you must settle from table to table,” one of the visitors, who spoke to LEADERSHIP on condition of anonymity, lamented.

“Each time I visited, I must part with at least N3,000, before they would fish out my cousin for me to see and hand over the food pack to him,” he recalled.

Besides, widespread allegations abound concerning other anomalies with investigation by our correspondent revealing other illicit activities.

It was gathered that illicit drugs are routinely peddled and smuggled into the dungeons holding some privileged executive inmates for cash ranging from N10,000 to N25,000 – to facilitate the couriers’ access to their targeted inmates.

“Some hard substances are stuffed inside loaves of bread and passed on to the inmates under the watchful eyes of officials who might have collected tips from the courier,” a prison source revealed.

Also, inside sources disclosed that women are smuggled in for “a quick discharge to assuage the sexual urges of the sexually – starved inmates”, while also, men – to – men homosexualism thrives with reckless abandon.

Speaking with our Correspondent, one of the freed inmates, wrongly sentenced to death over involvement in a phantom kidnapping allegation, but later freed after a good Samaritan offered to bankroll the appeal of the case which led to their freedom, had cause to thank the Almighty God for the intervention.

“I would still have been a man waiting to die by now, although I was already dying by installment, if not God. Inside the prison, I had lost all hopes concerning my life and things of the world. It was just between me and my God.

“And, at that state, I was no longer in the flesh and blood; I was a completely spiritual person. And at that point, I used to see God talking to me directly.

“Since we were innocent, God sent us a good Samaritan to come and fight for us because we had no money to appeal the case at the time we were convicted.

“But after spending about 12 years, our prayers were granted, and we are free and alive today while the person that framed us up had since died as we came back to hear,” he recalled, fighting back tears.

According to him, his only regret was the wife, who resorted to flirting with other men to the point of becoming pregnant upon hearing his death sentence.

“When I heard this (my wife’s infidelity), I stopped eating her food each time she brought food to come and see me while in prison. She was wondering why I rejected her food, not knowing people from my village usually came to tell me everything.

“Her mind was made with me knowing fully well that I was not going to come back, but the God I serves, who knows we were innocent, kept faith with us and eventually untangle us from the hangman noose.

“Out of prison, mine is to commit the remaining years of my life to God and humanity; doing His biddings and walking His path because no one else can do this except Him alone,” he stressed.

However, the state Command of the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS), could only express doubt concerning the possibility of women having to be smuggled inside the prison facility for inmates to have what he described as “conjugal relationship.”

He noted that cases of bribery and drugs peddling inside the facility, though could not be ascertained, remain a possibility given the prevailing situation of corruption in Nigeria.

Responding to questions during a recent media interaction with members of the Editorial Committee of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Akwa Ibom State Council at his Atan Offot, Uyo, office, the Controller of Corrections, (CC), Mr. Frank Okonkwo, admitted knowledge of bribery allegations, assuring that the matter was already being investigated.

Warning that no punitive rod would be spared against any official found culpable, the CC charged erring officials to live above board in the discharge of their duties.

On the prison congestion, Okonkwo, disclosed that three of the four prison formations in the state – Uyo, Ikot Ekpene and Ikot Abasi, have overshot their carrying- capacity with only Eket slightly holding a lesser number of inmates.