The Kaduna State Commissioner for Human Services and Social Development, Hajiya Hafsat Baba, has said some of the inmates rescued at the Niga Rehabilitation and Skill Acquisition Centre, Rigasa in Igabi Local Government Area of the state were chained for eight years.
This is as National Human Rights Commission has ordered investigations into the activities of illegal detention centres recently uncovered by security agencies to establish cases of violation of human rights for possible prosecution.
Governor Nasir El-Rufai on Saturday led some policemen to raid the centre where 147 women, men as well as children were rescued, Punch reports.
The inmates comprise 125 males and 22 females among them four foreigners from Cameroon and Niger Republic.
The commissioner said on Sunday that the state had commenced the process of reuniting the inmates with their families
She said some of the inmates have been in chains for eight years, adding that the chains were removed on Sunday.
“They have been under torture. They were all in chains. We have to call a welder to remove the chains in their legs. Some of them have been in chains for eight years. They just removed the chains this afternoon,” she said.
She also said the inmates were tested for HIV while those with mental issues were taken to the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Barnawa, Kaduna.
The Executive Secretary of the NHRC, Tony Ojukwu, directed the commission’s State Coordinators in the North-West to unravel the circumstances surrounding the illegal detention centres and the children abducted in Kano.
Ojukwu, in a statement by the Director Corporate Affairs and External Linkages, Lambert Oparah, said, “This will enable the commission to ascertain the various aspects of human rights violations perpetrated by the operators of the so-called educational and rehabilitation centres preparatory to ensuring their prosecution and punishment in line with the law.”
