Twenty-four Enugu Correctional Centre inmates have graduated with degrees in various areas from the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Enugu Custodial Special Study Centre, for the academic year 2023/2024.
In the same breath, 24 other students matriculated for the 2024/2025 academic year.
Speaking at the graduation/matriculation ceremony at the Enugu Custodial Centre over the weekend, the Desk Officer in Charge of the Study Centre, ASC1 Arinzechukwu Onovo, expressed satisfaction that the graduates were leaving the Centre reformed and re-oriented and urged employers to engage them.
“You have overcome sickness, setbacks and other personal struggles to achieve this level of success. When I look at you, my esteemed scholars, I see employers and promising prospects,” he said and urged other inmates and the matriculating students to be of good behaviour and shun negative tendencies such as “drug abuse, cultism, theft, kidnapping, fraud and other malicious activities.”
According to Onovo, just 12 inmates were enrolled for the 2011/2012 academic year when the special study centre first opened, but it now has 261 students.
Onovo urged other inmates to join in the curriculum to improve their living conditions once they leave the detention institution, citing the fact that a former inmate who studied at the Study institution now has a doctoral degree and lectures at one of Nigeria’s universities.
He noted that since its inception, 1,139 inmates had registered for NECO, and that “this is the explanation for the exponential growth in our NOUN admission.”
The Enugu Controller of the Nigeria Correctional Service, Mr. Nicholas Obiakor, in his remarks emphasised the significance of education, which he said was fundamental to development.
Obiakor said that part of their mandate is to re-orient and re-integrate the inmates to become useful citizens when they leave the centre and urged other inmates to enroll for the programme.
“Our mandate is to re-orient and re-integrate the people and we can do this through education because without education, there will be no development. We cannot do with education.”
He emphasised the value of education, revealing that they have produced doctorate degree holders since the study centre’s inception and expressing gratitude to the Federal Government for abolishing certificate discrimination.
Mr. Elvis, one of the graduates who spoke on behalf of others, expressed his satisfaction that after 17 years in the Correctional Centre, he is now free and happy to graduate.
“I’ll never stop thanking the Controller for making it possible that those who the society rejected, today have been made good. Joy is flowing in my soul that 17 years of my life was not wasted but has become a glorious opportunity,” he said.