ABUBAKAR Malami, Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice has announced the release of 6590 inmates across 32 correctional facilities in 14 states of the federation.

Malami who disclosed this on Twitter on Wednesday noted that the inmates had satisfied the laid down conditions and were released as part of modest efforts to decongest the Nigerian Correctional Centres.

The Minister added that as a member of the Committee on Prison Reforms and Decongestion, he had taken up a major role towards the decongestion of Nigerian prisons.

Earlier in March, the Senate had called on the Federal Government to decongest prison facilities advising that it should budget more to build new prisons.

The ICIR reported that the Red Chamber had urged the Federal Government to quickly take steps to reduce the population in the nation’s correctional centres as well as disinfect them to avoid any possible outbreak of an epidemic among inmates.

The Senate also advised the Federal Ministry of Interior to commence the process of upgrading facilities in all the correctional centres.

It added that the Judiciary, the Ministry of Interior and correctional centres need to work together and come up with a workable modality on how to fast track the process of decongesting the correctional centres in the country.

Nigeria’s Correctional Services currently has about 250 prisons of which 155 are prisons for convicts and 83 are satellite facilities and with 74,000 inmates.

According to a report by VOA, an average Nigerian prison houses about five times the number of inmates it was intended for.