Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje granted freedom to 294 inmates of Correctional Centres in the state.
This was made known in a statement signed by the governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Abba Anwar, on Sunday.
According to the statement, Ganduje, who witnessed the release of the 294 inmates from the Correctional Centre at Goron Dutse, declared that the gesture was in the spirit of Eid-El Fitr and to complement the Federal Government’s efforts to further reduce congestion in the nation’s Correctional Centres.
“In line with the Federal Government’s directive to decongest prisons, I visited the Goron Dutse Correctional Facility with @DGawuna. 300 inmates on lesser charges were freed with their fines paid up by the state. The idea is to reduce the population to avoid a viral outbreak,” the governor noted in his official Twitter handle on Sunday.
According to the statement by Anwar, he recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari had directed governors to decongest correctional centres to help observe COVID-19’s social distancing protocol.
“It is based on that directive that in the last two months the state has released 603 inmates,” said the governor in the statement.
“The goal is to decongest Correctional Centres. We hope that they will be of good character henceforth.”
The Governor also gave each of the freed inmates N5,000 as transport fare to their destinations.
The Comptroller of Prisons, Abdullahi Magaji, on his part, commended him for donating 30 hectares of land to the Federal Government for the construction of a modern Correctional Centre.
Magaji advised the freed inmates to be of good character and stay off crimes to avoid going back to prison.
The statement however revealed that the governor was accompanied to the centre by his deputy, Nasiru Gawuna, and the Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero.
