Federal government has commissioned a 20-bed comprehensive hospital, equipment and generating plant at the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Ilesa, Osun State.
The healthcare centre, according to the minister of interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, is part of the COVID-19 Intervention Fund given to the Correctional Service.
He said each geopolitical zone in the country benefitted from the comprehensive healthcare project.
Aregbesola, in a statement issued by his media adviser, Sola Fasure, when he commissioned the project, restated President Muhammadu Buhari’s commitment to “the repositioning, resuscitation, reformation and rehabilitation of inmates in all the custodial centres of the country.”
The minister said inmates are entitled to their full human dignity, decent meals, medical treatment and humane accommodation, adding that their rights should be protected and enhanced.
He appealed to state governments to take advantage of the new constitution amendment to activate speedy judicial process to take care of offenders, as well as providing the requisite infrastructure for state inmates, who constitute the majority of inhabitants of custodial centres nationwide.
Aregbesola said: “The reform President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration introduced to correctional services was designed to change the conception of the penal system from the punitive prison system to a correction system that reforms and integrates convicted offenders back into society as part of civilised humanity.”
“Inmates are also humans created in the image of God but who have made bad choices leading to their incarceration.
