Nigeria prisons to adopt biogas for cooking

The Controller- General of the Nigeria Prisons Service, Ja’afaru Ahmed, has said efforts are on for biogas to be used in cooking for the over 70,000 inmates nationwide.

Ahmed said the move became necessary toward protecting the environment which, he noted, had been adversely affected by felling of trees.

He said the service was already working on alternative means of cooking food for the inmates in over 244 prisons in the country.

He made this known when the Director- General of the National Agency for the Green Great Wall (NAGGW ), Goni Ahmed, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja yesterday.

“I wish to assure that in the next few years, the prison would stop using firewood, we would either be using biogas or cooking gas.

“The service has taken steps because the forest is drying up; to buy wood now, we have to go to a distance to get it. One day we may go and not find it,” he said, adding that the service was repositioning its kitchens to be using gas for cooking.

He said the pilot programme for the adoption of biogas was at advanced stage at the Port Harcourt and Kirikiri prisons and it would be harnessed to other prisons when commissioned.

The Director- General of NAGGW, Goni Ahmed, who led management staff on the visit, said excessive use of firewood in organised places like prisons, schools and bakeries reduced the efforts of the agency in fighting desertification.

He said desertification affected about 43 per cent of the total land mass of the 11 states that made up the agency and called for a collaborative effort to fighting the menace.