The Enugu State Chief Judge, Justice Innocent Umezulike on Tuesday concluded his two-day jail delivery exercise at the Enugu Prisons, releasing 83 year old man, Mr. John Ugwu and numerous others in the process.
The exercise, which was carried out with seven other judges mobilized by the Chief Judge, centred on juvenile and asylum matters.
The octogenarian, who was remanded in prison custody in August 2010, was brought to the court in a stretcher as he had become blind and could not walk.
The Attorney-General of the State and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Anthony Anih, said the state could not continue to prosecute the criminal proceedings against Ugwu, who was standing trial for murder.
Justice Catherine Nwobodo discharged the accused on account of his condition.
Similarly, many other accused persons regained their freedom and some got bailed.
Speaking at the end, Justice Umezulike promised to carry such exercise regularly, at least twice in a year.
“Never have we been able to do so much since I took the centre chair of the Enugu High Court,’’ he said, commending the stakeholders who made the visit possible.
Also speaking, the Attorney General, Anthony Anih reiterated his commitment towards ensuring that cases were speedily tried and disposed without waiting for jail delivery service by the CJ.
The Controller of Prisons in the state, Mr. Chris Ntewo, pledged to send quarterly reports about the prisons’ situations to the appropriate authorities for appropriate action.
He said that warders were trained to handle convicts, but that, those awaiting trial had far outnumbered convicted inmates in all the prisons in the state.
The Enugu Prison, with the capacity to accommodate just 638 inmates, had 1,529 persons, among them 1,179 awaiting trial, representing over 80 percent of the total inmates in the prison.
One of the inmates discharged, Nkechi Kanu from Imo state who was remanded in prison custody for the last ten months by an Nsukka Magistrate court for assault on her lecturer at UNN, thanked the CJ and AG for granting her unconditional pardon.
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