Senator Gabriel Suswam (PDP, Benue East) has suggested that some leaders and politicians should be allowed to spend a day or two in prison to be better leaders and politicians.
\nSuswam made this suggestion on Tuesday at the plenary while contributing to a motion moved by Sen. Uche Ekwunife (APC, Anambra Central) on `The need to upgrade, decongest and disinfect Correctional Centres nationwide.`
\n\u201cI want to strongly support this motion based on my personal experience of what I saw, and when I left, I recommended that for people to be proper leaders in this country,\u00a0at least each and every one of us must spend one or two days in prison, we would be better human beings.
\n\u201cMr President, they took me there in the night, and the following day, which was morning the entire prison knew that I was there.
\n\u201cMr President it might interest you to know that most of the people who spend years in prison are for a misdemeanour that you can even dismiss.
\n\u201cA young man spent seven years in jail for just a problem of N10, 000, various individuals were there on very minor offences that the police could afford to correct them and send them home.
\n\u201cI made it a point of duty when I left that place, for the next month, I took close to twenty of those young people out of that place.
\n\u201cIt didn\u2019t take anything,\u00a0it was just to pay that money and take them back to court.
\n\u201cI selected about three lawyers, sent them to Kuje prison to go and attend to them, and about 20 of them were taken out.
\n\u201cSo, I think that I want to support the motion, because most of the people who are there do not need to be there, and they unduly congest the place.
\nSuswam decried the poor state of hygiene in the correctional Centres, pointing out that they are breeding grounds for various forms of unthinkable diseases and crimes.
\nAccording to him, when it comes to the issue of disinfecting the place, Mr President, God forbid that this COVID-19 infects any of these correctional centres in the country, Mr President it would be a calamity.
\n\u201cThe environment in any of the prisons here, Mr President you would be shocked if you go there; we need to as a matter of urgency ask the authorities responsible to address the issue raised in this motion with the urgency it deserves.
\n\u201cSo, we can be seen as a country ready to correct people rather than sending people to go and die or become more hardened,\u201che said
\nThe former governor pointed out that in some parts of the world wealthy individuals and companies build correctional centres and work in collaboration with the government.
\nHe said \u201cin developed climes,\u00a0individuals or companies build prisons and maintain them to the highest standards and government takes care of what is needed to be taken care of.
\n\u201cSo, let us encourage individuals who are wealthy or companies that want to engage in that business to begin to build prisons, and maintain them and give them standards, so, we will not have the situation of congestion.\u201c
\nNews Agency of Nigeria reports that Sen. Suswam, a former governor of Benue is being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for alleged N3.1 billion fraud and spent 2 days in Kuje prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senator Gabriel Suswam (PDP, Benue East) has suggested that some leaders and politicians should be allowed to spend a day or two in prison to be better leaders and politicians. Suswam made this suggestion on Tuesday at the plenary while contributing to a motion moved by Sen. Uche Ekwunife (APC, Anambra Central) on `The need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5773,7],"tags":[870,267,1294],"class_list":["post-25364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-prisons","tag-suswan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}