The
Controller General of the Nigerian Prisons Service, Ahmed Ja'afaru, has
told the story of how he ended up buying fuel mixed with water.
Ahmed Ja’afaru
According to a report by Vanguard. it was a case of ‘the rich also
cry’ Thursday in Abuja recently when the Controller General of the
Nigerian Prisons Service, Ahmed Ja’afaru, recounted how some time ago,
he was stranded along the Kaduna-Abuja road as a result of bad fuel
which he bought from a fuel service station in Abuja, the nation’s
capital.
The CG spoke when he presented empowerment tools to 45 ex-convicts
and also commissioned the renovated Henry Akingba Medical Centre at the
Prisons Headquarters in Abuja.
At the event which was the last lap of the Offenders’ Reform
Programme of the Service, one of the beneficiaries (names withheld), a
fuel tanker driver, said he was sent to prison after he was nabbed for
mixing several litres of water with the fuel in his tank.
“I remember the day I was stranded at Jere”, the Prisons boss began.
“We bought fuel and half of it was water. I had to sleep in
Kaduna. Some tanker drivers will take tankers and stop by the bush and
then take three drums of fuel from inside the tank. They will now refill
the tank by pouring three drums of water into the tank to mix with the
fuel.
“I believe they were later arrested because I called my friend
who was the owner of the filing station and through out that night, he
had to switch on all the pumps to dispense the several thousands of
litres of water that had been discharged to him as fuel”.
Presenting the “aftercare” materials to the ex-offenders, the CG urged the beneficiaries to justify government’s “heavy investment in providing these tools by working hard and being worthy ambassadors of the Nigerian Prisons Service”.
According to him, the idea of imprisonment for punishment alone has become primitive and outdated. “It
is our sincere conviction that incarceration is not the end of life for
anybody, as every jail term if desired, can be used to transform the
life of an individual and return him back to the society as a better,
productive and responsible citizen”.
Earlier, Deputy Controller General, Health and Social Welfare,
Mrs Husseina Kori said the aftercare of the prisons service “is a
post-discharge programme aimed at equipping discharged inmates with
start-up materials to hit the ground running in the various skills they
have acquired while in incarceration. The scheme also monitors the
performance of these persons so as to actualize our mandate of
reformation, rehabilitation and re-integration of inmates back into the
society”.
While handing over the medical centre to the service, Managing
Director of AIICO MultiShield Limited, the service’s Health Management
Organization, Dr Leke Oshunniyi said “the decision to embark on a
Corporate Social Responsibility Project for the benefit of the NPS was
made sometime in the year 2016. I am delighted that what was once a
vision is now a reality. We hope that this event will mark the beginning
of an even closer relationship between us.
“Let me seize this opportunity to thank on behalf of all
Nigerians, the Controller General, officers and men of the Nigerian
Prisons Service for their quiet but indispensable role in the security
of our great nation. Only few people outside of the Service know that
there are over 200 prisons in Nigeria. This is an indication of the
quiet efficiency and effectiveness of the NPS in subserving its role”, said Dr. Oshunniyi.
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