The Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) has announced its plans to recruit 6,545 staff members in different cadre of the service.
Comptroller General (CG), NPS, Jaffaru Ahmed, made the disclosure on Monday in Abuja during the 2017 budget defence in the House of Representatives.
He said N6 billion was allocated for recruitment in the 2017 budget.
Ahmed explained that the problem of inadequate personnel in the agency prompted the employment.
He said that the service would embark on mechanised agriculture to enable prisoners produce enough food to feed themselves in order to reduce high financial burden of feeding on the Federal Government.
According to him, the service spends over N16 billon each year to feed about 72,000 inmates in the country. He adding that in 2016 fiscal year, the NPS had an outstanding of N5 billion owed contractors for the feeding of prisoners.
“We intend to set up specialised farm centres to train prisoners towards boosting food production and make prisoners able to feed themselves.
“Although prison is not a revenue generating agency, yet we generated about N40.1 million in 2016 which was paid into the national treasury.
“The service is not allowed to retain any of its revenue unless generated from the Prison Industry or workshop, where the inmates were directly involved,” Ahmed said.
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