The Federal Government will not prosecute any of the inmates that escaped from the Owerri Custodial Centre, Imo State if they return voluntarily.
A total of 1,844 inmates escaped when a large number of gunmen attacked the facility in the early hours of Monday, April 5, 2021.
The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) revealed that 35 inmates refused to escape and six of those that escaped already returned by Monday afternoon.
While visiting the facility on Tuesday, April 6, the Minister of Interior,
Rauf Aregbesola, urged others to return voluntarily before they are arrested.
Noting that unlawful escape from custody is a crime for which they can be tried separately from their original crimes, the former governor said amnesty will be granted to those that surrender.
The Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Adamu has asked officers of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) not to hesitate in defending themselves by using firearms.
IGP Adamu stated this on Tuesday when he visited Imo state for an on-the-spot assessment after the attack on the command headquarters by gunmen on Monday.
The gunmen also attacked the Nigerian Correctional Services freeing an unspecified number of prison inmates.
Channels Television gathered that the attack occurred in the early hours of Monday after which the hoodlums set the facilities ablaze.
IGP Adamu is briefed on the damages carried out by the attackers
During the attack, one person suspected to be a fleeing inmate was hit by a bullet while carrying his travel bag.
Owerri attack, plot to destabilize South-East, says HURIWA
On
By Dirisu Yakubu
Famous rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, yesterday linked Monday’s attack on a correctional facility and Police Command in Owerri as a plot to destabilize the South-East geo-political zone.
This is even as the group queried the methodology deployed by outgoing Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu in arriving at the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, as the mastermind of the violent attacks.
According to HURIWA, the speed with which the police “investigated and unmasked” perpetrators of the heinous acts, “lacks forensic evidence,” and should as a result, be taken with a pinch of salt.
April 6, 2021 Share
Militants armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades launched a series of coordinated attacks overnight in southeastern Nigeria, targeting a prison where more than 1,800 inmates then managed to escape, authorities said Monday.
The attacks began around 2 a.m. in the town of Owerri in Imo state and lasted for about two hours, according to local resident Uche Okafor. Gunmen also assaulted various other police and military buildings, authorities said.
“Efforts are in top gear to re-arrest the fleeing detainees,” said Nigeria prison spokesman Francis Enobore, adding that 35 other inmates stayed behind during the prison break.
The coordinated attacks come less than two weeks after another wave of violence in southeastern Nigeria, when at least a dozen security officers were killed during attacks on four police stations, military checkpoints and prison vehicles.
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YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - More than 1,800 prisoners are on the run in southeast Nigeria after escaping when heavily armed gunmen attacked their prison using explosives and rocket-propelled grenades, the authorities said on Tuesday.
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Nigerian police said it believed a banned separatist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), was behind the attack in the city of Owerri, but a spokesman for the group denied involvement.
The secessionist movement in the southeast is one of several serious security challenges facing President Muhammadu Buhari, including a decade-long Islamist insurgency in the northeast, a spate of school kidnappings in the northwest and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.