Tension over N3bn owed prison food contractors

Several months after the Federal Government increased the feeding allowance of prison inmates from N200 to N300, tension is mounting among contractors who supply the food over non-payment of about N3billion outstanding bills.
A non-governmental organisation, Alliance for Good Governance and Democracy (AGGD), expressed concern over the development, urging the Federal Government to expedite action in the payment of monies owed the food contractors.
In a statement signed by its national coordina¬tor and national secretary, Shadrack Nwokolo and Jimi Sanwo respectively, the group revealed that after a thorough investigation of the state and con¬ditions of prisons across the nation, it discovered that contractors responsible for food supplies were being owed huge sums of money for the services they rendered to Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) in the last one year. According to the group, in January 2015, the Federal Government increased feeding allowance for prison inmates from N200 to N300 daily, excluding N150 allowance for gas per inmate a day. The group explained that the to¬tal provision for feeding each inmate is N450 per day.
It stated: “There are about 56,000 inmates scat¬tered in Nigerian prisons. A lot of prisoners would have been dying on a daily occurrence if not for the kind gesture of the contractors who have not relented in supplying foods to the inmates despite the huge indebtedness by NPS in the last one year.”