Former governor of Taraba State, Rev. Jolly Nyame who spent 10 years upon conviction for fraud said foods given to prisoners by authority was terrible, stating that, ‘he was like eating toilet paper garnished with sauce’ during his years in prison custody.
He said as governor he has power to approve a death sentence, but having left the office and got convicted, he lost all powers and became answerable to someone else.
Speaking on his experience in prison with journalists, he disclosed that he was living in self-denial, adding that there was no mattress in the room given to him.
He said: “To be honest, being a chief executive is being next to God because with your red pen, you can approve a death sentence. So, you can imagine that immediately after leaving office, you are subjected to trial, and in my case, for a period of 10 years. So, it was like I was broken down during those years before I was finally convicted. When I went there, for the first one or two weeks, I was living in self-denial.
“I could not believe it because when I went into prison, there was nothing in the room allocated to me. They had to provide a mattress, and when they brought the first food, it wasn’t like food to be honest. It was like I was eating toilet paper garnished with sauce. So, the first lesson I learnt was humility. No matter who you are, if you are convicted, you have to know that you are under someone’s authority.”
Nyame said he interacted with inmates from where he began to appreciate his own travails. Saying, Nigeria’s judicial system needed to be reformed as they were some inmates who didn’t know what brought them to prison.
“Secondly, I also learnt that as a former chief executive, I was a pal to every inmate there and with time, I started interacting with them. It was when I was able to interact with them that I was able to appreciate the degree of problems I passed through. I realised that we have problems with the judicial system in this country.
“I came to understand after interacting with them that some came in without even knowing why they were there. One of them said they just found him roaming and they just picked him and said he was a Boko Haram member. The inmate has been there for a couple of years. Someone said he was hungry; so, he went to the field where they planted ugu (fluted pumpkin leaves), and that was how he was arrested and taken to prison.”
