*All Our Facilities Stock With Medicines-Official
There are indications that the health facilities in the Nigerian Correctional Services, may be without the required medications to treat the inmates in the custody of the Correctional Services (prisons).
An inmate who chose to be anonymous told TheFact Nigeria that when they take ill, the Doctor of the Services prescribes the medicine which they buy with their own money.
His words: “I was ill with malaria earlier in the year, the Doctor prescribed the medicine but I had to send one of the wardens here to buy from outside. They only give us paracetamol when we are sick.
“They don’t have medicines in the store at all. If its paracetamol, they can give us. Any other medicine, we send someone to buy from outside”.
Spokesman for the Service, Mr. Augustine Njoku when contacted, denied the allegations saying, “We have enough medicines in all the clinics. We have never had an inmate dying of sickness in our facilities”.
He challenged our reporter to name the person making such allegations, whether an inmate or staff.
A source who claims to have a relative currently detained in one of the Correctional facilities corroborated the inmate’s position.
She said that she has had to send him money to buy medications in the past when he complained of illness.
She said that last month, she did the same because he was sick for days and had insisted that he was only administered paracetamol and told to send a warden to buy antimalarial if he had money on him.
The inmates are however, not permitted to receive visitors due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
