PRISON walls in Nigeria may be high, but the rules appear remarkably low. Behind the gates of some custodial centres, inmates reportedly have access to drugs, mobile phones, gambling platforms, businesses and even social media livestreams.If these reports are true, Nigeria has a correctional crisis that goes far beyond overcrowded cells and decaying infrastructure.The reported arrest of Iyabo Sowunmi for allegedly attempting to smuggle a hard drug known as “colos” to her son, Dare, is the latest disturbing pointer. Dare is on death row at the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Ibara, Ogun State.The incident exposes not only the depravity that can surround the prison system, but also the disturbing ease with which the outside world may be penetrating its supposedly secure walls.Sowunmi was arrested barely a week ago after correctional officers allegedly discovered the substance concealed in a sachet of a popular cocoa beverage. She has since been handed over to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.Her alleged action must be judged through due process. But the bigger question cannot be avoided: how did the substance get so close to a death-row inmate in the first place?AI describes drug use among prisoners as “a serious challenge” and identifies cannabis as “currently the most widely used illicit drug within the prison population.”Other substances reportedly used by inmates include opioids such as Tramadol and codeine-based syrups.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. If these reports are true, Nigeria has a correctional crisis that goes far beyond overcrowded cells and decaying infrastructure.The reported arrest of Iyabo Sowunmi for allegedly attempting to smuggle a hard drug known as “colos” to her son, Dare, is the latest disturbing pointer. Dare is on death row at the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Ibara, Ogun State.The incident exposes not only the depravity that can surround the prison system, but also the disturbing ease with which the outside world may be penetrating its supposedly secure walls.Sowunmi was arrested barely a week ago after correctional officers allegedly discovered the substance concealed in a sachet of a popular cocoa beverage. She has since been handed over to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.Her alleged action must be judged through due process. But the bigger question cannot be avoided: how did the substance get so close to a death-row inmate in the first place?AI describes drug use among prisoners as “a serious challenge” and identifies cannabis as “currently the most widely used illicit drug within the prison population.”Other substances reportedly used by inmates include opioids such as Tramadol and codeine-based syrups.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The reported arrest of Iyabo Sowunmi for allegedly attempting to smuggle a hard drug known as “colos” to her son, Dare, is the latest disturbing pointer. Dare is on death row at the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Ibara, Ogun State.The incident exposes not only the depravity that can surround the prison system, but also the disturbing ease with which the outside world may be penetrating its supposedly secure walls.Sowunmi was arrested barely a week ago after correctional officers allegedly discovered the substance concealed in a sachet of a popular cocoa beverage. She has since been handed over to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.Her alleged action must be judged through due process. But the bigger question cannot be avoided: how did the substance get so close to a death-row inmate in the first place?AI describes drug use among prisoners as “a serious challenge” and identifies cannabis as “currently the most widely used illicit drug within the prison population.”Other substances reportedly used by inmates include opioids such as Tramadol and codeine-based syrups.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The incident exposes not only the depravity that can surround the prison system, but also the disturbing ease with which the outside world may be penetrating its supposedly secure walls.Sowunmi was arrested barely a week ago after correctional officers allegedly discovered the substance concealed in a sachet of a popular cocoa beverage. She has since been handed over to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.Her alleged action must be judged through due process. But the bigger question cannot be avoided: how did the substance get so close to a death-row inmate in the first place?AI describes drug use among prisoners as “a serious challenge” and identifies cannabis as “currently the most widely used illicit drug within the prison population.”Other substances reportedly used by inmates include opioids such as Tramadol and codeine-based syrups.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Sowunmi was arrested barely a week ago after correctional officers allegedly discovered the substance concealed in a sachet of a popular cocoa beverage. She has since been handed over to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.Her alleged action must be judged through due process. But the bigger question cannot be avoided: how did the substance get so close to a death-row inmate in the first place?AI describes drug use among prisoners as “a serious challenge” and identifies cannabis as “currently the most widely used illicit drug within the prison population.”Other substances reportedly used by inmates include opioids such as Tramadol and codeine-based syrups.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Her alleged action must be judged through due process. But the bigger question cannot be avoided: how did the substance get so close to a death-row inmate in the first place?AI describes drug use among prisoners as “a serious challenge” and identifies cannabis as “currently the most widely used illicit drug within the prison population.”Other substances reportedly used by inmates include opioids such as Tramadol and codeine-based syrups.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. AI describes drug use among prisoners as “a serious challenge” and identifies cannabis as “currently the most widely used illicit drug within the prison population.”Other substances reportedly used by inmates include opioids such as Tramadol and codeine-based syrups.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Other substances reportedly used by inmates include opioids such as Tramadol and codeine-based syrups.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also indicated that a small percentage of prison inmates inject drugs into their bloodstream. That is not merely a prison-management problem. It is a public-health and national-security concern.NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. NDLEA data paints an equally grim picture of the wider drug crisis. More than 60 per cent of the 77,859 drug offenders arrested over a recent five-year period were young people.Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Dare is one of around 3,833 people on death row in Nigeria. Convicted of offences carrying the death penalty, he and others remain in limbo as state governors have generally been reluctant to sign execution orders.Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Yet, somehow, a condemned inmate was allegedly being supplied with an illicit psychoactive substance.Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Was his mother feeding an addiction? Was she acting under pressure from him? Had she done this before and been unlucky this time? Who supplied the substance? How much gets into the facility undetected? And is there an organised network facilitating drug trafficking among inmates?These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. These are not idle questions. They go directly to the integrity of Nigeria’s custodial system.And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. And the Ibara facility has already attracted attention for another extraordinary episode.Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Only weeks ago, another death-row inmate there, Elijah Oyebode, reportedly went live on TikTok. He reportedly operated businesses and placed sports bets while in custody. In one livestream, he reportedly revealed that inmates had access to multiple mobile phones and internet connections.Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Following the backlash, the Nigerian Correctional Service removed the officer in charge of the facility and two other senior officers. It also recovered Oyebode’s phone.The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The episode should have embarrassed the custodial authorities and prompted them to undertake a serious institutional reform.A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A man convicted of murdering a female final-year university student and sentenced to death was reportedly operating in the digital world as though he were a free citizen. He could livestream. He could reportedly conduct business. He could gamble. He could communicate beyond the prison walls.What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. What, then, was the prison actually preventing him from doing?A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A custodial centre exists precisely to restrict the liberty of people whose conduct has made such restrictions necessary. It is not a co-working space. It is not a betting shop. It is certainly not a digital playground for condemned criminals.The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The Sowunmi and Oyebode incidents may have no connection. But together they raise a deeply uncomfortable question: what exactly is happening inside Ibara, and how much of it is happening in other custodial centres across Nigeria?The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The problem is clearly not limited to drugs and phones.In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. In December 2025, a correctional officer was suspended for impregnating an inmate inside a prison in Potiskum, Yobe State.There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. There have also been reports of female inmates breaking custodial rules to pay conjugal visits to male partners outside custodial facilities.If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. If such reports are accurate, the issue is no longer isolated misconduct. It points to a system in which rules can apparently be negotiated, circumvented or simply ignored.That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. That is institutional decay.And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. And institutional decay inside prisons is particularly dangerous because prisons hold people whom the state has deliberately deprived of liberty. The state therefore assumes an enormous responsibility for what happens to them — and for what they are allowed to do.Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Drug trafficking behind prison walls must consequently be treated with the seriousness it deserves.The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The alleged smuggling of “colos” into Ibara should not end with the arrest of one woman. It should trigger a nationwide investigation into drug consumption, trafficking and supply chains within custodial facilities.How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. How widespread is drug consumption among inmates? How are drugs entering prisons? Who supplies them? Are correctional officers involved? How many inmates receive addiction treatment? What psychological support is available? How many phones are in circulation? Who controls internet access? And who is actually supervising the supervisors?These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. These questions cannot be answered by another committee whose report gathers dust.A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A correctional centre cannot correct anybody if it cannot enforce its own rules.Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Nigeria’s custodial system desperately needs reform. Too many people remain behind bars when community service, probation, restorative justice and other non-custodial measures would be more appropriate.Related NewsKogi chief allegedly impregnates teen, damages wombEgypt sentences TV presenter, 11 others to death over drug traffickingHorror in Ogun: Celestial pastor kills wife over infidelity, runs into speeding truckNot every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Not every offender needs a prison cell.The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The NCoS admits it is struggling to cater for more than 81,000 people in its facilities. That makes reform urgent. Prisons should primarily hold those whose detention is necessary for public safety and justice.But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. But incarceration does not cancel human dignity.Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate healthcare, poor nutrition and degrading living conditions have become depressingly familiar descriptions of Nigerian prisons. A bucket serving as a toilet should shame a society that claims to respect human dignity.Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Nigeria need not reinvent the wheel.Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Norway’s correctional philosophy is built around the “principle of normality”: the punishment is the restriction of liberty, while other rights remain unless security requires otherwise. Its correctional system is designed to reduce reoffending and gradually prepare prisoners for reintegration.Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Finland combines closed prisons with open prisons where suitable inmates can work, study and prepare for life outside custody. The Netherlands also places rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of its custodial philosophy.Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Nigeria should learn from these examples without pretending that its circumstances are identical.At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. At the very least, however, the country must stop treating prisons as dumping grounds for human beings.Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Many existing facilities are unfit for decent habitation. Cells are old and overcrowded. New facilities should be built to modern standards, while existing ones must be renovated and properly secured.Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Security must be tightened. Visitors and staff should undergo rigorous but professional screening. Mobile phones must be controlled. Drug-detection systems must be strengthened.Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Staff welfare, training and professional standards must improve.And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. And officers who collaborate with inmates in criminal activities must face the full force of the law.A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A correctional officer who smuggles drugs, facilitates criminal activity or abuses an inmate is not merely a rogue employee. He is helping criminals operate from a facility maintained and funded by the Nigerian state.The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The 2023 constitutional amendment moved prisons from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List, allowing both federal and state governments to legislate on custodial centres. The states should make that devolution meaningful by building and managing their own correctional facilities.But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. But infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Nigeria also needs social engineering. Parents, schools, religious institutions, community leaders and the media must help young Nigerians understand the difference between legitimate ambition and self-destruction.Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Dignity in labour must be celebrated over the fantasy of overnight wealth.Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Nigeria must also examine the values it rewards.In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. In 2024, EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede warned about so-called “419 training schools” where children, including primary school pupils, were allegedly recruited and trained for cybercrime, sometimes with the knowledge and consent of their parents.That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. That is a national moral emergency.A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A parent should not recruit a child into crime.A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A mother should not become a courier for narcotics.A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A prison officer should not become an accomplice to an inmate.And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. And a correctional centre should never become a marketplace for drugs, gambling, phones and criminal enterprise.Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. Mrs Sowunmi must be accorded due process. If the allegation against her is proved, the law should take its course. But the authorities must not stop at her.They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. They must find out who supplied the substance, how it got into the facility, whether similar incidents have occurred and whether officials inside or outside the prison are facilitating the trade.The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The same urgency should be applied to the larger failures exposed at Ibara.The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The disturbing tales emerging from Nigeria’s custodial centres are not amusing anecdotes. They are warning signals.A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A country that locks people away but cannot control what they do behind its walls has not built an effective correctional system.It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. It has merely built warehouses for human beings, with criminals sometimes finding ways to continue their criminal enterprises from inside. That is unacceptable.A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. A prison must be secure. A correctional centre must correct. The state must enforce its rules with firmness, protect inmates from abuse and criminal exploitation, and prepare those who will eventually return to society to live useful, law-abiding lives.The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. The alleged attempt to smuggle “colos” to a condemned man should therefore not end with Mrs Sowunmi’s arrest.It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls. It should open the prison doors to scrutiny, not to let inmates out, but to let Nigerians see what has been allowed to fester behind the walls.