The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) has sanctioned 147 of its personnel for various acts of misconduct, including complicity in contraband trafficking.

The Controller-General of Corrections, Sylvester Nwakuche, announced this yesterday in Abuja.

NCoS authorities have also destroyed a total of 1,167 mobile phones comprising iPhone, Android devices, button phones, and other devices smuggled into correctional facilities across the country.

The devices were destroyed at the service’s headquarters in Abuja.

The Controller-General, who personally supervised the burning of the items, said the exercise was a clear statement that the service would decisively confront and eliminate all threats to the security, order and integrity of the custodial centres.

Nwakuche said the NCoS was not only serious about the ongoing reforms in the service but would ensure that infractions, acts of indiscipline, complicity, and sabotage would be met with appropriate sanctions against erring personnel.

Speaking after the destruction of the contraband items, Nwakuche said the items were “prohibited items recovered from custodial centres across the country within the last eight months”.

He added: “These include mobile phones, SIM cards, and other unauthorised materials. Their presence within our facilities is unacceptable. They compromise security, disrupt discipline, and create channels through which criminal activities are sustained from within custody.”

Nwakuche stressed that “smuggled and trafficked cash totaling N2,569,000 confiscated from inmates in the course of these operations has been duly paid into the appropriate government treasury in line with extant financial regulations”.

The controller-general maintained that his administration’s policy of zero tolerance for indiscipline and misconducts has not changed.

He warned that personnel who indulge in such acts would be shown the way out of the service.

Nwakuche said: “Let me state clearly: the trafficking of contraband into our custodial centres cannot occur without some level of internal compromise.

“Any officer who aids, ignores, or facilitates this act is in direct violation of their oath and a threat to the integrity of this Service. Anyone found culpable will be visited with the full weight of the law, as others before them have already experienced. Be warned.” (The Nation)

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