Edo State Chief Judge Joe Acha on Wednesday set six inmates unconditionally free from the Oko Medium Custodial Centre.

Mr Acha was carrying out his last jail delivery ahead of his retirement from service on May 19.

The six inmates that regained their freedom were Williams John, 19, Imeh Matthew, 36, Danjuma Isaiah, 23, Michael Umoko-Lucky, 26, Anthony Isaac, 47, and Lawal Dahu, 27.

They were all released and discharged for the lack of their case files and evidence against them.

Mr John, who hails from Chad, was charged with conspiracy and unlawful possession of firearms and had awaited trial for 11 months and 24 days.

Mr Matthew from Akwa-Ibom, as charged with unlawful carnal knowledge, had spent one year and a month awaiting trial.

Mr Isaiah from Edo was charged with attempted murder and had spent 10 years and nine months awaiting trial.

Mr Dahu from Katsina was charged with kidnapping and had spent seven years and eight months awaiting trial.

Mr Umoko-Lucky was charged with conspiracy and armed robbery and had spent one and eight months, while Mr Isaac, charged with kidnapping, had spent six years and seven months awaiting trial.

During his first jail delivery at the centre, Mr Acha said he observed that some inmates’ case files could not be found.

Earlier in a speech, he said that the judiciary had always been very passionate about jail delivery such as this.

“Today’s visit shall obviously not be as extensive as last, given that we only recently attended to a very elaborate list of all the detainees in the various custodial centres across Edo.

“Therefore, the catchment area for this jail delivery shall be for inmates whose cases came up during the last visit but were not concluded because of the need for additional or follow-up reports in respect of such inmates.

“Other are all detainees sentenced to death, who have exhausted all legal procedure for Appeal and a period of 10 years has elapsed without the execution of the sentence pursuant to section 12(2) (C) of the Nigerian Correctional Service Act, 2019, which empowers and gives me the discretion, as chief judge, to commute such sentences in deserving cases to life imprisonment.

“In the last category are special cases of aged or terminally ill inmates considered deserving of mitigation,” he said.

Kenosha Okwosha and Osogun Olusegun, both deputy controllers of corrections, medium security custodial centre Benin and Oko, respectively, appealed to the government for more vehicles to enable them to cover courts in distant areas without much stress.

(NAN)