The Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has commended one of Nigeria’s foremost investigative journalists, Fisayo Soyombo and the publisher of The Cable Newspaper, Simon Kolawole for their undercover investigation at the Ikoyi Correction Center.
The ministry through its official twitter handle further said, “While we await the outcome of the investigation to determine if what was reported was right or wrong, the intention of the publisher, undercover reporter and everyone involved in the reportage is worth celebrating”.
Aregbesola further condemned the dehumanisation of inmates, saying maltreating them hinders their reformation as productive members of society.
“You cannot permit dehumanisation of confined people and expect them to be anything less than an animal when they come out. The only way you can get a sane human being out of confinement is to… (educate), and that is what we use,” he said.
It should be recalled that Fisayo, in his undercover report, spent two weeks in detention — five days in a police cell and eight as an inmate in Ikoyi Prison — to track corruption in Nigeria’s criminal justice system, beginning from the moment of arrest by the police to the point of release by the prison.
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