For their first year of activity, they facilitated the release of 100 wrongfully accused prisoners. They are the five lawyers of the Headfort Foundation, a Nigerian NGO created in March 2019 by Oluyemi Orija, a young lawyer from Lagos. The NGO provides legal representation to those who cannot afford it. “I have witnessed several court cases where people are charged with trivial matters, such as breaking egg crates. They are sent back to jail because they do not have lawyers to defend them, and they continue to languish in prison “, explains the lawyer.
Adeolu Lawal, a 53-year-old bus driver, spent two years in prison without being convicted, as a preventive measure for having destroyed goods in a store during a road accident. In Nigeria, state legal aid does not exist. Those who cannot afford a lawyer can spend months in prison without being interested in their case. Now, thanks to the Headfort Foundation who worked on his case, Adeolu Lawal is free and waiting for his case to be judged.
Nigeria is the victim of prison overcrowding which is the direct consequence of these unjustified imprisonments, according to Oluyemi Orija. “This is the reason why there are 4,000 detainees in an establishment with a capacity of 800 people”, she explains to Guardian. People awaiting trial represent 74% of the prison population, or 51,000 prisoners in the latest figures.
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In some prisons, Al Jazeera argues, preventive detention can affect 90% of detainees. As for prison overcrowding, the authorities consider that it only concerns the big cities: Lagos, Kano, Port-Harcourt.
The arrival of the coronavirus did not facilitate the work of the five lawyers. Visits being prohibited in prison, they have set up mobile offices in front of the courts in order to contact the defendants directly. The team of lawyers has also just launched a mobile application Lawyers NowNow, to be present in the 240 prisons in Nigeria.
With the LawyersNownow App, you can access a lawyer within seconds for free.
The App is available for download on play store and Appstore.#lawyersnownow#accesstojustice#prisonreform pic.twitter.com/dK4MkCkFPi
– Headfort Foundation (Prison Reform Initiative) (@HeadfortF) December 15, 2021
The Headfort Chambers law firm, which the NGO supports, is the foundation’s main fundraiser. This is the firm that Oluyemi Orija had created before launching the foundation. The profits of one are used to finance the other. The NGO also appeals for donations, in particular to pay the deposits requested from the defendants. But money is scarce and the association turns to volunteers and asks for help from jurists, lawyers, NGO activists to partially process the cases.
And if the team is exclusively made up of women, it is, according to the founder, because the women “are passionate about justice”.