James Edoga

My contact in 2012 with Bashiru Adamu, Initiator of Dream Again Prison & Youth Foundation, I believe, was divine. Working with the government for 15 years and having to move and work through communities and interact with youths, I discovered, among other factors, ignorance, low self-esteem, idleness and

poor education to be strongly connected with juvenile offences and crime generally. Research has shown the same to be among the factors responsible for recidivism—the repeating of or returning to criminal behaviour by the same offenders. Prisons around here in Africa have scarcely helped the situation as they are more a punitive than a correctional or rehabilitation set-up.

As I dreamt and thought through setting up at least mini-libraries in communities to engage literate but idle youths, I ran into this young, passionate initiator who, among other projects, was already setting up the first library in prison, invariably transforming prisons in Nigeria from punitive to correctional facilities through specialized training, skills acquisition and empowerment of prisoners to become assets in and out of prison

to themselves and the society. Wow! I became interested and committed to contributing my little efforts to his foundation’s causes.