He said the project would “give hope to the incarcerated, dejected and often rejected, stigmatised and dehumanised inmates and ex-inmates of prisons.”Iwuagwu added, “The project is to reform, rehabilitate and re-integrate the near-broken products of our excruciating and castrating criminal justice system.“It is not just concerned with giving hope to the inmates but also to campaign for a safe and receptive society for their re-entry.”Iwuagwu said the spiritual aspect of the programme was handled by the PFN, while SMEDAN handled the skill acquisition part, adding that the psycho-analytical evaluation and counselling of the inmates were done by the university’s counselling centre.The enormity of what the programme meant to the inmates, who all donned academic gowns, was expressed during their procession into the hall, when the emotionally sang “Amazing grace…”
When PUNCH METRO spoke to one of the inmates, Ada Obasi, she said words were not enough to express how good she felt about passing through the programme.She said, “I feel so good. The first day I found myself in prison, I asked God why. It was when I got here that I realised that God was trying to help me. We were taught how to make soaps, beads, decorations, and more importantly how to handle ourselves and control our anger.”
Obasi told our correspondent that she was married and had a four-year-old girl. As one of the graduating inmates, she said she had spent a year and five months in prison and hoped to reunite soon with her family.One of the graduating inmates, Peter Ozigi, who said he was in prison for kidnapping, explained that he hoped to establish a company that made toiletries and soap after his release. He explained that he hoped to hone in his singing skills and make a living through it.
“I was a school certificate holder when I came here and I have been here for three years,” he told our correspondent.
Another inmate, Emmanuel Onyekpe, who was matriculating, dazzled the audience with his sonorous voice as he sang about their desire to become better persons through the prison experience and the programme.The Controller-General of Prisons, Mr. Olusola Ogundipe, who was represented at the event by the Assistant Controller-General, Mr. Chuks Afujue, said penal system should be multi-dimensional.He explained that in modern day penal system, incarceration was not aimed at punishing prisoners but identifying tendencies that led them to commit crime and finding solutions to such tendencies.
“To have a proper reformation, there must be a thorough investigation into the personality of the prisoner himself, with a view to identifying the cause of his atrocious behaviour. We should find out why a prisoner has decided to take to criminality,” he added.
When asked about how the prisoners would raise fund to start off their businesses, the Executive Director of PFN said the organisation hoped to raise funds from individuals and bodies to help them put their entrepreneurial skills to use.
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