About 200 Nigerian immigrants in Ghana will celebrate the forthcoming Christmas and New Year day behind bars. The majority of the roughly 200 Nigerians in Ghana’s jail houses are inmates at the Medium Security Prison (Male and Female; Ghana’s principal penitentiary) in Nsawam, but "a few others are in detention elsewhere across the country", according to Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Ghana, Ambassador Ademola Oluwaseyi Onafowokan.

The correctional home was built roughly 50 years ago and was designed to hold less than 800 inmates. Today, however, the facility is home to over 3,500 detainees.
From a visit by officials of Nigerian High Commission Accra to Nsawam Prison on Wednesday, December 12, 2012,it came to light that Nigerians account for 182 of the total 3,541 inmates at the jailhouse. The number of Nigerian convicts at Nsawam stood at 139, while 43 others are in remand there pending conclusion of their trial.
A breakdown of the number of Nigerians at Nsawam Prison reveals that one of the male convicts, an indigene of Niger State, was sentenced to death in 2010 after trial for “causing the death of someone in Tamale”. Another male convict is doing life-sentence for robbery. Out of the 139 convicts, 47 were found guilty of robbery; while 14 of the 43 inmates, whose trials are ongoing, are accused of this same offence. Interestingly, one of these inmates was sentenced to 115 years for robbery.
Although female Nigerian detainees were 11 in number, one of them is in remand for murder; while the other 10 women are in prison for narcotic offences. It is, however, worth pointing out that, whereas 47 of the Nigerians at Nsawam are in for robbery, narcotic offenders account for the highest number of Nigerian convicts at this jailhouse. Indeed, no fewer than 62 Nigerian convicts are serving time inside Nsawam for drug-related crimes. Aside from narcotic and robbery offences, fraud and defilement are two other reasons 12 Nigerians were also sent to Nsawam Prison. Convicts for fraud are seven, against five for defilement.
Sadly, 23 of Nigeria’s 36 states are represented at Nsawam Prison. Anambra State tops the list with 32 inmates, followed by Abia (22) with Imo coming a close third (20). Delta and Lagos States tie at number four with 14 inmates each; Enugu posts nine, while Edo and Ogun states have eight each. Further analyses showed that Borno and Ebonyi have four inmates each, while Kaduna, Rivers and Sokoto have three each; against two each for Kwara, Osun and Oyo as well as one inmate each from Akwa Ibom, Katsina, Kogi, Niger, Ondo and Zamfara.

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