Pay N10,000 to sit your promotion exam: Federal workers forum blows whistle on Nigerian prison rmacket

The Federal Workers Forum has alleged widespread extortion in Nigerian Correctional Service promotion examinations, described the nation’s correctional centres as “hell on earth” plagued by disease, overcrowding and inmate deaths, and called for urgent reforms including immediate prison decongestion and improved welfare for correctional officers.

Nigeria’s correctional centres are not rehabilitating anyone. According to the Federal Workers Forum, they are killing people.

In a hard-hitting statement jointly signed by National Coordinator Comrade Andrew Emelieze and General Secretary Comrade Ayo Ogundele, as reported by Sahara Reporters, the FWF described the country’s correctional facilities as places of “torment, dehumanization, and corruption” that have abandoned any pretence of rehabilitation.

“Our so-called correctional centres have become hell on earth,” the Forum declared, citing overcrowding, dilapidated infrastructure, poor feeding, tuberculosis outbreaks and an alarming frequency of inmate deaths as evidence of systemic collapse.

The conditions described are stark. “Inmates sleep on bare floors, packed tightly together like slaves in the cargo hold of an underground slave ship,” the statement said, adding that some Nigerians have spent between 10 and 15 years in custody without conviction.

“A justice system that keeps unconvicted citizens locked up in hazardous conditions for over a decade is oppressive and indicts our entire judiciary,” the Forum stated bluntly. “Today, a prison sentence in Nigeria is effectively a death sentence.”

But the crisis extends beyond inmates. The Forum alleged that correctional officers are being exploited on multiple fronts — forced to personally fund four different uniforms weekly from meagre salaries, denied Duty Tour Allowances during out-of-state training, and now allegedly compelled to pay N10,000 each toward the “welfare” of promotion examiners.

The Federal Fire Service is similarly implicated, with officers allegedly extorted to the tune of N25,000 each to sit promotion examinations.

The Forum demanded independent investigations into the extortion allegations, immediate prison decongestion through general amnesty, a one-year cap on awaiting-trial detention, abolition of capital punishment through commutation of death sentences, and implementation of a N300,000 minimum wage for federal workers.

The group also urged federal workers to continue wearing black every Monday “as a sign of protest until these crises are resolved.”