Dankano said many of the prisoners were in the Asian-pacific region for drug-trafficking related offences.
The revised figure is 6,000 more than the earlier figure published by the ministry in June this year.
“This figure cannot be exact because some countries’ laws do not allow them to reveal such information. Sometime our missions go through serious challenges to get the information,” he said.
Dankano explained that Nigeria and Thailand were currently implementing a Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA), which has seen the repatriation of about 400 Nigerian prisoners since 2008. He stated that the PTA allows the return of a prisoner to serve out his sentence in his home country where both jurisdictions are in agreement.
