Headfort Foundation: The all-female group of lawyers helping Nigerians abandoned in prisons regain freedom
In 2015, Friday was trying to perfect the bail of his cousin and secure his release when he was also arrested and put behind bars. His cousin and eight others had been charged with the kidnapping of a Chinese man. But Friday’s crime? The Police accused him of conspiracy, kidnapping, and robbery, and remanded him in custody. He had high hopes in the Nigerian judicial system to vindicate him and was waiting to prove his innocence in court to regain freedom, but that didn’t happen as fast as he had expected.
Shortly after his arrest, Friday’s cousin died in prison. Two years into the case, Friday’s case file reportedly went missing and could not be found at the Ministry of Justice. While eight others accused as conspirators were released on bail, Friday was forgotten in prison and spent six years there.
Just like Friday, Jonah was also arrested for stealing in 2018. In 2019, the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in its legal advice said Jonah had no ‘case to answer’ and recommended his release. But the legal advice wasn’t read by the Magistrate before his case was transferred to a High Court. The DPP is the government agency created to vindicate and enforce public rights and duties imposed by the Criminal Law, but its advice on Jonah’s case was ignored. That oversight cost Jonah three years in prison.
Help came for Friday and Jonah in 2021 when a group of all-women lawyers, under the non-profit organisation Headfort Foundation, took up their cases and fought for their freedom in 2022.
The Nigerian correctional centers are filled with thousands of inmates like Friday and Jonah awaiting trial for crimes some of them know nothing about while some have overstayed in the facilities due to administrative error. The Nigerian parlance ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is not the reality of many prisoners in correctional centres across the country. From cases like murder, rape, and kidnapping, to other crimes like public nuisance and trespassing, 70 per cent of inmates in correctional centres are awaiting trial.
“No fewer than 70 per cent of Nigerian inmates are serving time without being sentenced as they are awaiting trials,” Nigeria’s interior minister rauf Aregbesola said in October 2022. “Some are even there forever, there is no file, there is no prosecution process, they are just there.”
Aregbesola, who described the number of awaiting trial inmates in Nigeria as a threat to the security of the custodial centres, called for a review of the administration of the criminal justice system of the country to provide a timeline for trials.
According to Awopetu Ronke Grace (PhD), a Clinical Psychologist at the Department of Psychology, Benue State University, the “massive influx of inmates is as a result of a delay in the judiciary process, and the overcrowding tends to alter the psychological, physiological and behavioural wellbeing of the inmates.”
Some Nigerian female lawyers have now made prison decongestion their life mission and they are pushing to secure the release of prisoners who are mostly wrongly jailed or forgotten in prison.
The women of Headfort Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded in 2019 by Oluyemi Adetiba-Orija, a lawyer and Human Rights activist, are focused on providing free and easy access to justice to indigent and wrongly incarcerated inmates, victims of police brutality, and minor offenders.
But they also have a story. Before making prison decongestion and getting justice for those wrongly jailed their life mission, some of them have tasted the bitter pill the Nigerian judicial system has served many young people.
“The experience of my stepsister while we were growing up made me commit my life to seeking justice for those who are experiencing injustice and discrimination,” Eniola Omosehin, the Human Resource Director at Headfort Foundation told Neusroom. “It’s only by reading law that you can come out and touch lives.”
Defending inmates who have been condemned to prison because they couldn’t afford the service of a lawyer became Omosehin’s way of not just touching lives, but also of bringing to the fore the deplorable conditions in the correctional centres, addressing prison reforms, and seeking both the physical and mental well-being of prisoners, who are nonetheless “Nigerian citizens.”
“I’m passionate about prison reforms. The problem in Nigeria is that we know how to make laws, but we don’t know how to execute them. It’s not about changing prisons to correctional centres. There’s more to be done. Some people came to the prison and left worse than there were. Some even learn some bad things from correctional officers or their fellow inmates.”
For, the foundation’s communications director, Itunuoluwa Awolu, who jettisoned her dream of being a TV Presenter for law, her experience as an intern lawyer during her undergraduate days gave her the conviction to pursue seeking justice for the less privileged.
“During my 200 level, I started attending court and I saw the kind of charges people were brought in for in the courtroom and I became passionate about the Nigerian legal system. I wanted to know more and perhaps be part of the solution to the numerous shortcomings plaguing the system.”
The Nigerian Correctional Services was changed from the Nigerian Prisons Service by President Muhammadu Buhari on August 15, 2019, after signing the Nigerian Correctional Service Act of 2019 into law. However, not much appears to have been done to better the lives of inmates who live in overcrowded cells, with no access to clean water and sanitation. Prison cells are overcrowded by 37 per cent while seven in 10 inmates are awaiting trial.
Court filings, proceedings, and rulings in Nigeria are still mostly done manually. The lack of e-filings in Nigeria’s judiciary system has resulted in the loss of vital documents during transits, or as it was in 2020 when the Lagos Federal High Court, Igbosere, reputed as one of the oldest judicial buildings in Nigeria was burnt by hoodlums during the EndSARS protest. The effect of that destruction which will no doubt condemn more prisoners behind bars for longer time has not been quantified yet.
It is the same system rot that led to the misplacement of Friday’s case file. Omosehin who handled Friday’s case said that more should be done in Nigeria’s correctional centres other than changing the name.
Since 2019, Headfort Foundation said it has secured the release of over 300 inmates. Beyond that, it is also championing various legal projects to help equip ordinary Nigerians with fundamental human rights through the ‘My Rights, My Freedom’ project where chapter four of the 1999 constitution has been translated into Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba, Nigeria’s three major languages.
During the EndSARS protest in 2020, Headfort Foundation witnessed an increase in the number of reports of police brutality, extortion, arbitrary arrest, and harassment which led the organisation to develop the Lawyers NowNow App, to provide legal services and advice to Nigerians from any part of the country.
“I make sure that users using our Lawyer Now Now mobile App are satisfied. Even though they are not paying for those services, we want to ensure that they get the best of the best of the services as if they are paying for the services. I follow up with the users. I follow up with the lawyers. To make sure that services are being rendered the right way.”
But Awolu’s satisfaction comes more from seeing the faces of inmates light up when they are being released.
“The legal representation aspect is what gives me joy the most. Seeing that my work, my dedication to a particular case has actually given someone freedom, I can not put money on it.”
