Immediate past Comptroller General of Correctional Service, Alhaji Ja’afaru Ahmed, said on Thursday that 30,000 personnel of the Service were promoted to various ranks within three years under his leadership.

He added that some of the beneficiaries have been stagnated for 14 years as a result of daunting challenges facing the institution.

Ahmed spoke during his pulling out parade at the headquarters of the Service in Abuja.

Ahmed said: “I recalled with nostalgia, my appointment as the Controller General of Prisons, as it then was, on 17 May 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR at a critical period the Service was experiencing challenges on several fronts.

“The system was replete with decay in the infrastructure of operational vehicles, low-capacity building and irregular promotion of personnel. The situation was daunting and pitiable. ”

“Our healthcare service was nothing to write home about as hospitals and clinics merely existed in buildings without relevant drugs. More often than not, officers resorted to begging for alms to buy drugs and other essentials for inmates in times of need.

“Thus, staff morale came to its lowest ebb and an unprecedented level of indiscipline became the order of the day, resulting in frequent crises and jailbreaks in frightening successions,” he added.

He however noted that his administration initiated a total of 918 projects aimed at tackling the challenge of the dearth of infrastructure including a 3,000 capacity ultra-modern Custodial Centres in each geo-political zone across the country.

“Happily, a total of 745 of the projects have been completed while 173 projects are at various stages of completion,” he said.

The out-going CGC said:” Within this period, we have also been able to address the problem of logistics by procuring a total of 504 assorted operational vehicles to add to our fleet. 36 tractors were procured to revive the moribund Farm Centres to increase output and skills acquisition for the inmates.

“Our training schools and colleges across the country are now functional and brought to speed in terms of content and quality training. Within the period of my stewardship as the Controller General, I have promoted a total of 30,000 personnel including many that were stagnated for over 14 years.” (The Nation)

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