Earlier today, Olusola, Duroorike, Ay, Adeyemi, I and some other friends were at Kirikiri Medium Security Custodial Centre, which is a facility of the Nigerian Correctional Service located at Kirikiri community after which it is named.

Going to the facility was, for me, a way of connecting to the reality of the women and men confined in these facilities, as I hope and work toward the transformation of our justice system from one that is punitive to one that is restorative.

I should mention that I dream of a world without prisons because we would have succeeded in guaranteeing access to the needs that make human life meaningful to all – and no one would take to any precarious means to survive or rise above another.

The facility has a capacity of about two thousand but has over five thousand persons confined within it, very many of whom are awaiting trial.

Too many of the persons confined in this facility bear marks of starvation, and they were not in the best of sanitary conditions.

We could count almost all the ribs of one of the individuals we saw there. Many of them begged us for food and money as we walked by them.

Inside the facility, we sat under the roof of a church. They had a carol service ongoing while we were there, and the confined persons who filled up the church sang beautifully.

The scene of the carol was a reminder of how strong human attachment to art and community is, so that even in the direst situations, humans hold on to art and community.

Interestingly, one of our friends saw his old junior secondary school classmate among the confined persons brought to us to interact with.

The confined persons were eager to speak to us, obviously hoping that we would be able to help them regain freedom or at least satisfy the momentary need to feed their bellies.

A lot of persons in our team got emotional and gave nearly all the money they had on them to the individuals as we listened to their stories and tried to comfort them.

Instinctively, I think, folks felt it that these were still humans deserving of compassion regardless of the circumstances that led them to the facilities.

For me, the experience was another reminder of the fact that society will continue to need to confine some individuals to facilities like this the less it guarantees access to the needs that make life meaningful to its members.

If we guarantee access to educational and economic opportunities and all of life’s essentials to all and ensure that no one holds excessive wealth while some persons languish in misery, we will not need to confine anyone to such a facility.

And I agree with Olusola, that the individuals in this facility, like other such facilities, are not too different from many of us outside, who live from hand to mouth, with too many of us literally begging to survive.

We can do better. And we must!

NoPrisoners #FreedomForAll