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Nigeria pardons prisoners in coronavirus fight -presidential aide

Published 09/04/2020, 14:18
Updated 09/04/2020, 14:24

LAGOS, April 9 (Reuters) - Nigeria's president has pardoned
2,600 prisoners to reduce overcrowding in the West African
country's jails and slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, a
presidential aide said on Thursday.
"President @MBuhari has granted a presidential pardon to
2,600 inmates nationwide," Bashir Ahmad, President Muhammadu
Buhari's personal assistant on new media, said in a tweet.
He said it was part of the government's efforts to
"decongest the custodial centres" and discourage the spread of
the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19.
Ahmad, in another message on Twitter, said those pardoned
included inmates aged 60 and above, those with illnesses that
were likely to kill them and prisoners sentenced to three or
more years who had less than six months left to serve.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country of some 200 million
people, registered its first confirmed case of the novel
coronavirus in late February. It has had a total of 276
confirmed cases and six deaths.
The country has imposed a number of measures to stop the
spread of the virus, including the closure of its borders and
the imposition of lockdowns in the capital Abuja, the commercial
hub of Lagos and the neighbouring Ogun state.

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