Eid, Ramadan is a funfair affair here in prison – Ali Gabass

The ordeal of a Ghanaian prisoner in jail is no news particularly with the information on the terrible conditions they endure coming to bare through the media.

Stories have been told, reports filed on the poor conditions prisoners in the country have to go through. Award-winning journalist, Seth Kwame Boateng’s huge expose through his documentary “left to rot” perhaps did a great deal to remedy the situation.

His documentary highlighted how the inmates’ basic human rights were being violated per the UN’s standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners. He put the spotlight on the demeaning sanitary, sleeping, food and health conditions of convicts in a typical Ghanaian prison.

Whilst efforts are being made by the prisons service and government to rectify the situation, all hope appears far from lost in some parts of the Nsawam Medium Security Prison.

Incarcerated medical doctor, Sulley Ali-Gabass revealed this when he indicated how the Eid celebrations in the facility have been joyful despite the fact that it was being celebrated in prison.

The former Senior medical officer who was sentenced 25 years jail term in the Nsawam Medium Security Prison for defilement narrated his experience as far as celebrations to mark the Eid celebrations have been since he began his sentence at the facility.

Ali Gabass described the occasion as a ‘funfair affair’, explaining that the usual nostalgic feelings that come with celebrating with the family though absent, are substituted somehow with the joy they ‘create’ for themselves and the celebrations they enjoy owing to the benevolence of other muslims outside the prison walls.

“Despite the fact that we are in prison, it is a funfair affair when you come to see it here, the Eid, we celebrate it very well, just like outside, we dress very nicely, only that we are not with our family anyway and we pray”, he explained

He maintained that though he misses his family, he takes solace in the fact that muslim brethren within and outside the prison collaboratively work to make the celebrations equally memorable.

“You can’t compare it [celebrating Ramadan at the prison] to celebrating Eid with your nuclear family [and] extended family when you visit each other and all that. So those nostalgic feelings definitely will overwhelm you at a point during the celebrations".

An Accra Circuit Court found the former senior medical officer of the Effia Nkwanta Hospital in the Western Region guilty, of defiling a 16-year old boy and subsequently sentenced him to 25 years imprisonment.

He was, however, acquitted and discharged on the second count of unnatural carnal knowledge.

The judge, Rita Budu, said the maximum sentence was imposed, to serve as a deterrent to others who may want to indulge in same. Dr. Ali-Gabass who has already spent two years in prison insists he did not commit the crime, he however believes, Allah has a reason for putting him in jail.