While Nigerians celebrate the festive season with their families at home, about 200 of their countrymen in Ghana will celebrate the forthcoming Christmas and New Year day behind bars.
The majority (182) of the roughly 200 Nigerians in Ghana’s jail houses are inmates at the Medium Security Prison in Nsawam, but “a few others are in detention elsewhere across the country”, according to Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Ghana, Ambassador Ademola Oluwaseyi Onafowokan. The Medium Security Prison (Male and Female) in Nsawam is Ghana’s principal penitentiary.
From a visit by officials of Nigerian High Commission Accra to Nsawam Prison on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, it came to light that Nigerians account for 182 of the total 3,541 inmates at that jailhouse. The number of Nigerian convicts at Nsawam stood at 139, while 43 others are in remand there pending conclusion of their trial.
A breakdown of the number of Nigerians at Nsawam Prison reveals that one of the male convicts, an indigene of Niger State, was sentenced to death in 2010; after trial for “causing the death of someone in Tamale”. Another male convict is doing life-sentence for robbery. Out of the 139 convicts, 47 were found guilty of robbery; while 14 of the 43 inmates, whose trials are ongoing, are accused of this same offence. Interestingly, one of these inmates was sentenced to 115 years for robbery. Although female Nigerian detainees were 11 in number, one of them is in remand for murder; while the other 10 women are in prison for narcotic offences.