The federal government has earmarked no more than N1,270 ($0.846) per day to feed each inmate across Nigeria’s prisons in 2025, FIJ has found.
According to the 2025 Appropriation Bill, the ministry set aside N38,030,008,805 for foodstuff and catering material supplies in the Ministry of Interior’s budget.
This represents a N13,582,426,568 increase from the N24,447,582,237 the ministry budgeted for this purpose in 2024, but the naira value of the 2024 budget dwarfs the value of the new figure.
In December 2023, Adams Oshiomhole, chairman of the Senate committee on Interior, quizzed the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) for planning to use the feeding budget to feed dogs better than humans.
At the time, N800 was purposed for feeding dogs per day, while N750 was allocated for feeding inmates. That month, a dollar exchanged for N633, meaning inmates were being fed with $1.18 per day.
In September 2024, the FG approved a 50 per cent increase to the feeding budget for inmates. Umar Abubakar, NCoS spokesman, disclosed this at the Strategic Communications Interagency Policy Committee’s monthly press briefing in Abuja.
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He said the feeding for inmates would now be N1,150, N25 more than a 50 per cent increase, but while the numbers look like an increase, it represents a decline.
FIJ found that if all of the N38,030,008,805 budget was spent on inmates and no dogs, it would translate to N1,270 per inmate when considering Nigeria’s 82,000-inmate population.
The appropriation bill projects a N1,500 exchange rate for 2025. Going by this projection, if all the money went into feeding inmates, they would be eating food worth less than they did a year before.
In 2016, Othman Musa, the then Assistant Controller of Prisons, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that it cost the service N1,200 to feed each inmate. At that time, a dollar was valued at less than N400. The 2024 budget meant the allocation had dropped by more than half.
Earlier in 2024, inmates at the Calabar correctional facility in Cross River State, lamented over the quality of food served to them. This happened months after Oshiomhole’s complaints, and spurred the Service to declare the increase from the 2024’s N750 figure.
However, despite over 50,000 of the inmate population awaiting trial and yet to be convicted of any crime, the system continues to underfund their basic feeding despite the country’s dwindling economic situation.
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