Some civil society actors and concerned Nigerians have demanded a drastic response following the attack on the Kuje Correctional Centre (prisons) in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.
The centre came under attack late Tuesday, 05 July, 2022, by terrorists, who used high explosives and guns, leading to the escape of over 800 of the 994 inmates, including 64 Boko Haram terrorists.
Spokesperson for the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS), Umar Abubakar, said Wednesday that over 400 of the escapees had been recaptured while 443 were still at large.
Abubakar also noted that another 16 inmates, who sustained various degrees of injuries, were receiving treatment.
The attack happened the same day President Muhammadu Buhari’s advance convoy was attacked in his home state, Katsina.
In his immediate response to the attack, President Muhammadu Buhari said he was disappointed in the country’s intelligence operatives.
‘How can terrorists organise, have weapons, attack a security installation and get away with it? I am expecting a comprehensive report on this shocking incident’, Buhari tweeted.
The Executive Director of Connected Development, Hamzat Lawal, has called on Buhari to sack his security chiefs.
‘Sack your security chiefs’, Lawal tweeted. ‘This is a failure of intelligence and shows that Nigeria is vulnerable to any kind of attacks’.
A good governance activist, Aisha Yesufu, also questioned the capacity of the country’s security operatives.
In a YouTube video, the activist said that Abuja should be on security lockdown in order to recapture the terrorists.
For her part, cofounder of Constitution Lab and Speaker of the Nigerian Youth Parliament, Azeezat Yishawu, raised concerns over the safety of residents in Kuje and Abuja.
‘It is time we start getting the pictures of [inmates] who escaped from [Kuje prisons] for the public to identify and report them’, Yishawu said on her Twitter page.
Also reacting, a security expert and adjunct professor at the European Institute of Security Studies, Sadeeq Shehu, faulted the security setup around the medium prison.
‘An intruder can get into that prison easily. First, the place is clustered and overgrown with grasses which will even give any attacker a cover, especially in the night to move inwards until where the inmates are kept. The requirement is that there should be two fences in a normal prison’, Shehu complained.
‘You should be talking about a wall that is eight – 16 feet (outer) but by my estimation, what I saw was about 7ft maximum. You are supposed to put three layers of barbed wire on top (of the fence) and the idea is to at least delay an attacker’.
Although the FCT Minister, Muhammad Bello, has asked residents of the capital to remain calm following the attack, Nigerians await a reassuring response from their government.
Photo source: Presidency Nigeria