EXCLUSIVE: Nigerian Correctional Service Controller-General Sylvester Ndidi Nwakuche Moved Kuje’s Dying Liver Patient to Hospital a Day After Secrets Reporters Exposed the Centre, and His Headquarters Now Hunts the Officer Who Photographed the Sick Inmate

The inmate at the Kuje Correctional Centre whose swollen abdomen and failing liver were priced at N300,000 before he could see a hospital bed has been taken to hospital, officers at the centre who confided in SecretsReporters have said, moved out of the yard first thing on the morning of Tuesday 10 November, barely a day after the publication of the report that laid his case before the public.

In its report of Monday 9 November, SecretsReporters disclosed that an inmate at the centre who must appear in court pays N30,000 on every court day before the vehicle taking him to court moves, and that about N300,000 was demanded in connection with the liver patient’s treatment and his transport to hospital, a sick man held in a cell while the money that stood between him and treatment was raised or not raised.

The officers said the man was taken to a hospital they believe to be the Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital, and that the instruction for his removal came down from a high authority above the centre, an authority whose identity was not disclosed to anyone at Kuje.

The removal is the very movement section 25 of the Nigerian Correctional Service Act 2019 provides for, the removal of a sick inmate to hospital, the same movement that waited at Kuje on a N300,000 demand until the morning after the centre’s workings were published.

One officer, describing the reaction inside the yard, told SecretsReporters he was very happy at the move, because the alternative was that the man would be left inside the centre, in the officer’s own words, “till he die for nothing sake”.

The hospital run was only half of what descended on Kuje on Tuesday. The officers said a delegation from the national headquarters of the Nigerian Correctional Service arrived at the centre the same day, sent to investigate what the publication had laid bare.

The delegation’s business, the officers said, ran straight to the food. The visitors photographed the food served at the centre themselves, were not happy with the food they saw, and demanded to know who posted the picture of the sick inmate.

Since that visit, the officers said, the centre has been gripped by a hunt for the person who photographed the inmate, officers pressed to verify who took the picture, the matter pursued seriously across the yard, and the whole centre left tense under the questions.

The hunt has gone down to the floor of a cell. The officers said the Officer in Charge of the centre has been studying the tile visible in the published photograph of the beans served to inmates, working the picture over in an effort to identify the very cell it came from, and has still not got it right. The beans photograph, the officers said, had been treated inside the centre as a big secret of the authority, and its appearance in public stunned the leadership, leaving even the Officer in Charge moving around confused, unable to understand how it was possible for the picture to be posted on air.

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