COVID-19 Vaccine: A Right or Privilege for Nigerian Prison Inmates

Abstract

Citizens are members of a particular country who, because of birth, registration, or application, are entitled to enjoy certain basic rights and privileges. Discrimination by reason of age, ethnicity, religious background, or liberty of any person should not be entertained at any level; hence, every citizen is to be treated equally in terms of the enjoyment of basic rights and privileges. The most important fundamental right to be enjoyed by a citizen is the right to life, mainly because a person needs to be alive to enjoy other rights and privileges as contained in the constitution. However, the right to life is not limited to the right not to take a person’s life, and rather it expands to the right to enjoy unhindered access to resources that will ensure good physical and mental well–being. Unfortunately, some countries are unable to ensure the enjoyment of these rights by all their citizens. In a bid to manage the limited resources, some persons are being discriminated against, one of which is inmates who are incarcerated and serving an imprisonment term. This act of discrimination was evidenced in 2020 during the COVID–19 pandemic when immediate preventive measures were taken across the country to curb the spread of the virus. It became a cause of concern whether inmates in correctional centres were equally carried along on these measures. This article will discuss the right to life of prisoners in Nigerian correctional centres as it relates to their unhindered right to health. Using the doctrinal and empirical method, this paper will identify the local and international instruments that provide for the enjoyment of the right to health of inmates, and particularly whether inmates were discriminated against in the exercise of the various preventive measures taken during the pandemic.