A pioneering book on prisons in West Africa, Colonial Systems of Control: Criminal Justice in Nigeria is the first comprehensive presentation of life inside a West African prison. Chapters by prisoners inside Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos, Nigeria are published alongside chapters by scholars and activists. While prisoners document the daily realities and struggles of life inside a Nigerian prison, scholar and human rights activist Viviane Saleh-Hanna provides historical, political, and academic contexts and analyses of the penal system in Nigeria. The European penal models and institutions imported to Nigeria during colonialism are exposed as intrinsically incoherent with the community-based conflict-resolution principles of most African social structures and justice models. This book presents the realities of imprisonment in Nigeria while contextualizing the colonial legacies that have resulted in the inhumane brutalities that are endured on a daily basis.
Keywords: Nigeria, West Africa, penal system, maximum-security prison

Dr. Saleh-Hanna is an activist scholar and an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Crime and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts, in Dartmouth. Prior to moving to the United States, she lived in Nigeria and worked with prisoners along the West African coastline. Her book, Colonial Systems of Control: Criminal Justice in Nigeria (2008) is the first to include first-hand accounts by prisoners in West Africa and the first to provide an in-depth analysis of life inside West African prisons. Dr. Saleh-Hanna serves on the board of editors for the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons and the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies.

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Chris Affor wrote “My Story” and “A Tribute to Solidarity: My Oasis” while serving time in Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos State, Nigeria. He was a member of the PRAWA programme, which works to build solidarity among prisoners. Chris continues to serve time on awaiting-trial holding charges.

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Uju Agomoh has a PhD in criminology and prison studies (University of Ibadan, Nigeria), an MPhil degree in Criminology from the University of Cambridge, England, and an LLB from the University of London (Queen Mary and Westfield College). She is involved in monitoring human rights violations within African penal systems.

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Biko Agozino is a professor of sociology, Coordinator of the Criminology Unit and the Acting Head of Behavioral Sciences at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. His books include Black Women and the Criminal Justice System (1997), and Nigeria: Democratising a Militarised Civil Society (coauthored, 2001). He is the series editor for the Ashgate Publishers Interdisciplinary Research Series in Ethnic, Gender, and Class Relations and the editor-in-chief of the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies.

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Clever Akporherhe wrote “My Nigerian Prison Experience” after being released from Kirikiri medium security prison. These experiences describe his time as a convicted prisoner. Since then Clever has been arrested by the Nigerian Police Force and is currently serving time in Kirikiri medium security prison on awaiting-trial holding charges. He has orally communicated that prison conditions experienced by awaiting-trial prisoners are far worse than those he experienced as a convicted prisoner.

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Sylvester Monday Anagaba wrote “The System I Have Come to Know” and “Man’s Inhumanity to Man” while serving time on awaiting-trial holding charges in Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos State, Nigeria. He passed away in 2004 in the maximum security prison hospital. Prisoners have confirmed that he was told before he died that he had earlier been diagnosed with AIDS. Prison officials failed to inform him of that diagnosis until shortly before his death. He was never provided with any medication.

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O. Oko Elechi is an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the Prairie View A&M University. He received his PhD from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. He also holds two degrees from the University of Oslo, Norway. His writings on restorative justice, community policing, and African indigenous justice systems have been extensively published in international journals, book chapters, and anthologies. He is also the author of Doing Justice without the State: The Afi kpo (Ehugbo) Nigeria Model (2006).

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Osa Eribo wrote “Another Face of Slavery” while imprisoned in Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos State, Nigeria. He was a soldier in the Nigerian army, and upon demanding proper medical attention after sustaining injuries during peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia. He was later taken to Egypt for a supposedly medical treatment, then was brought back to Nigeria, charged with “mutiny,” and imprisoned. He has since been released from prison due to interest in his case by several human rights activists and lawyers.

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Mechthild Nagel is a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York, College at Cortland, and a senior visiting fellow at the Institute for African Development at Cornell University. She is the author of Masking the Abject: A Genealogy of Play (2002), coeditor of Race, Class, and Community Identity (2000), and coeditor of Prisons and Punishment: Reconsidering Global Penality (2007). Nagel is the editor-in-chief of the online journal Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies.

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Igho Odibo wrote “June 14, 2003,” while serving time in Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos State, Nigeria. He has not been convicted of any offence. He is currently living with HIV/AIDS and continues to struggle for access to medication and due process.

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Julia Sudbury is a professor of ethnic studies at Mills College, a liberal arts women’s college in Oakland, California. From 2004 to 2006 she was the Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, Equity, and Diversity at the University of Toronto. Julia is the author of Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women’s Organizations and the Politics of Transformation (1998), the editor of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex (2005), and the coeditor of Color of Violence (2006) and (under the name Oparah) Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (2006).

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Chukwuma Ume is an ex-prison officer with the Nigerian Prison Service and now works as a consultant on penal reform. He has considerable years of experience working with civil society organizations, specifically working in the areas relating to penal reform, human rights, and peace building in Africa, and specifically Nigeria. He currently lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.

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Unyierie Idem holds an award-winning Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Edinburgh University, Scotland; an MA in French from the University of Calabar, Nigeria; and a First Class Honours MA in French from the University of Calabar, Nigeria.

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