Nearly two-thirds of Nigeria's prison population is still waiting for a judge to hear their case

Walk into any Nigerian prison. Two out of every three people inside have not been found guilty of anything.

The Nigerian Correctional Service confirmed the figure to the National Assembly this week: 64% of the prison population is awaiting trial. Not convicted. Not sentenced. Waiting. Some have been waiting for months. Others for years. A court date gets set, then adjourned. A lawyer changes. A judge gets reassigned. The case moves slowly through a system with more cases than it can process, and the person inside waits.

They are, under Nigerian law, presumed innocent. The law says so. The cells say something else.

The Correctional Service head raised this as a systemic crisis. He was speaking to the same National Assembly that spent last week in emergency session debating e-transmission clauses and this week processing a 3.4 trillion naira budget. The legislature that can convene on short notice for electoral politics apparently hasn't found the same urgency for the 64% of imprisoned Nigerians who have never had their day in court.

Justice delayed at this scale isn't a backlog. It's a design outcome. The system produces this result consistently, year after year, and calls it a challenge rather than a choice.