The Executive Secretary, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Tony Ojukwu, has said that hawkers, loiterers and petty criminals should not be arrested by the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) for engaging in petty criminal activities within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Ojukwu said this Monday in Abuja during a training organised for the members of Joint Task Force of Abuja Environmental Protection Board by the Commission in partnership with OSIWA and PRAWA.
The training with the theme the decriminalisation and declassification of petty offences project had in attendance representatives of AEPB, civil society organizations and residents of the FCT.
In his opening remarks during the two-day training, Ojukwu said that many ex-convicts become more hardened when released into the society from prison, especially when they feel that the reasons for their imprisonment were not justified.He said: It is appalling to note that many awaiting trial inmates constitute the greatest number of people in our prisons, thereby leading to prison congestion. More worrisome is the fact that these inmates are hawkers in the FCT or petty thieves we can live with. They are arrested and crammed in prisons for petty offences such as begging, hawking, loitering, yet, everyday, we complain of prison congestion.
When these people are released from prisons, they become more hardened and determined to terrorise society, because they feel that they imprisonment was not justified. Kidnappers, murderers, rapists are the people that are supposed to be in jail, not sachet water or groundnut hawkers.
Instead of being sent to prison, a petty thief should be asked to do one or two community service, such as sweeping the street or cleaning the toilet of an establishment. This way, the community will benefit and not sending them to prison to add to congestion there or to become more hardened when they come out.
Also speaking, the Deputy Director of PRAWA, Mrs Ogechi Ogu, said that only children of the poor engage in petty offences and implored law enforcement agencies to find proportional punishments for petty criminals.There is need for us to find a solution to the congestion of our prisons. When you talk about petty offence, you talk about the poor. Children of Senators and ministers are not the people hawking pure water, groundnuts, etc. These class of people are often arrested by the AEPB for hawking, loitering and other offences and then sent to jail when they fail to pay fines imposed on them by officials.
We should find proportional punishment for them and not necessarily sending them to prison to add to the numbers there. Government should put measures in place to reintegrate prisoners into society, so that they don't become more hardened when they are through with serving their sentences, she said.

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