Olumide sits in the overcrowded courtyard of Ikoyi correctional facility in Nigeria’s commercial city Lagos, pleading with a lawyer to take up his case. The inmate worries about how he will find another job if he is ever released. But right now, he’s also starving. ‘I don’t have any person to help out with food,’ he says, explaining that many prisoners are reliant on family members bringing in food and medicine, or are forced to go without. More than 3,000 prisoners are housed at Ikoyi, which was built for a capacity of 800.
On 13 November 2019 Olumide, who is a driver, had been waiting for a bus after a night out clubbing with friends. He says a group started running towards him shouting ‘stop thief’ and shortly after he was arrested by police for a robbery of spare parts that had taken place in a nearby store. He has been in prison for almost six months without a trial. More than two-thirds of Nigeria’s prison inmates are pre-trial detainees, some having spent decades behind bars, waiting for a trial.
