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Abuja - Nigeria has raised the feeding allowance of inmates of its over-crowded prisons to 200 naira ($1.5) from 150 as part of measures to improve their welfare, says the information minister. John Odeh said: "Cabinet approves that the feeding sum of 150 naira be increased to 200 naira per inmate with effect from January 01 2008 because it has to be included in the budget." He said the government was worried about the appalling conditions in prisons, which had led to a series of bloody riots in recent weeks.Water and power supplies would also be improved upon in the coming days, he assured. Odeh said there were more than 40 000 inmates in the country's jailhouses, 80% of them still awaiting trial.Last month, eight inmates of Agodi Prison in southwest Nigeria were killed during an attempted jailbreak. They were protesting poor living conditions in their cell.Amnesty International had condemned prison conditions in Nigeria, describing them as appalling, with "forgotten inmates" locked away for years without trial simply because their files had been lost.An Amnesty delegation recently spent two weeks in Nigeria, visiting 10 prisons in the states of Enugu, Kano and Lagos and in the Federal Capital Territory around Abuja.It called on the government to improve conditions and to ensure all prisoners were tried within a reasonable time.As in the days of Noah...
