Oyo CJ pardons 38 inmates, says criminal cases should not exceed 180 days

The Chief Judge of Oyo State, Justice Munta Abimbola, on Wednesday declared that criminal cases should not exceed 180 days from the period of arrest to completion of trial under the Administration of Criminal Justice Law (ACJL) 2016 of Oyo State, adding that when such is flouted, the Comptroller of Prison is saddled with the responsibility of passing the information to the office of the Chief Judge or the Attorney General within 90 days.

Justice Abimbola made this declaration during a prison decongestion exercise at the Abolongo Medium Security Prison in Oyo, adding that the team was at the prison not in a private capacity but as representatives of a statutory body set up by law to ensure speedy dispensation of justice and stop law officers from turning the prison to a dumping ground for perceived offenders or victims of civil disagreements.

He stated that the ACJL is a revolutionary law put in place to ensure timeliness to the justice system supervised by the ACJL Monitoring Committee and urged the police to act within the confines of the law and differentiate between civil wrongs or breach and criminal offences.

He stated that the police is not a debt collecting office, adding that, “if a person is unlawfully arrested or arrested for the wrong reasons, the consequent detention is also unlawful.”

The Chief Judge who commended the prison authority for doing its best in the face of various challenges said that arrest should not erode the fundamental rights of a suspect, adding that law enforcement officials should not engage in any form of torture, cruelty or degrading treatment or use derogatory words on the suspect.

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Speaking during the exercise, the Comptroller of Prison, Tosin Akinrojumu, said the prison is not a mere incarceration centre but a place for reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration, adding that 26 inmates of the Agodi prison wrote the last NECO examination and passed with six credits each.

He added that the prison is working out an arrangement so that inmates can attend the Open University while in custody to prepare them for a better life outside prison walls and urged the Chief Judge to help the prison authority by looking into the cases of inmates that were sick and those whose cases had waited for DPP advice for too long

At the end of the exercise, 38 inmates were released; three on health ground, 14 for having spent over five years in custody without trial and 21 on compassionate grounds after considering the facts of their offences.

The Abolongo Prison was designed to accommodate 160 inmates but it opened on Wednesday with 456 inmates consisting of 364 awaiting trial inmates and 92 convicted inmates.