Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE), Apapa Branch, has donated household items worth N50,000 to inmates of Kirikiri Medium Prison as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Mr Sunny Ejeje, NSE Apapa Branch Chairman, made the donation during a welfare visit to the facility in Lagos on Friday.
Items donated included clothes, shoes, plastic kettles, bibles and toiletries to give the inmates a sense of belonging in the society.
Presenting the items, Ejeje urged corporate organisations to support the needy in the society.
He said that the NSE would partner with Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) in rehabilitating the perimeter fence and some dilapidated buildings in the prison.
“We as a society can partner with one or two companies to take care of some of these noticeable shortcomings of the prison.
“The number of inmates already overwhelm the prison facilities and there is need for us to decongest our prisons,” the NSE official said.
Receiving the items, Ben-Rabbi Freedman, Deputy Controller of Prisons, thanked the NSE for the gesture and enjoined other corporate bodies to emulate it.
“I am happy because corporate organisations are beginning to show interest in what areas they can be relevant in the life of people that have been otherwise condemned.
“People neglect the prisons because they think it is entirely up to the government to provide the facilities,” he said.
According to him, individuals can actually build prisons and run them.
“This will help provide a place where criminals can be rehabilitated to help them integrate back into the society,” Freedman said.