Niger CJ Chides Police Prosecutors, Frees 10 Inmates

Niger State chief judge, Justice Halima Ibrahim Abdulmalik has chided police prosecutors for keeping suspects in correctional facilities without taking them to court for proper prosecution.

She also reviewed eight cases, sentenced and released the suspects by backdating their conviction date to four years they served each even as she released two others for no case.

The chief judge who was on her first visit to Minna old correctional centre yesterday condemned in strong terms the deliberate refusal of police prosecutors to arraign suspects in court.

“You cannot just detain somebody without taking him to court for prosecution. They are human beings like you,” she told the prosecutors while describing the deliberate refusal of the prosecutors to prosecute suspects as inhuman.

The chief judge who was visibly annoyed with the police prosecutors told the head of the prosecuting unit of the Niger State Police command, Abdullahi Mayaki to make available the case files of all the suspects awaiting trial languishing in the correctional facilities to her office for necessary action, within the next 24 hours.

During the visit, there were inmates awaiting trial at the correctional facilities for over five years without tracing their case files at the office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) in the Ministry of Justice.