Nearly 900 inmates escaped in a prison break in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, officials said Wednesday, blaming the attack on Islamic extremist insurgents.
At least 443 of the 879 escapees are still missing, said Umar Abubakar, a spokesman for the Nigerian Correctional Service, while hundreds of others have either been recaptured or surrendered at police stations.
Officials will “track down all escaped prisoners and bring them back to custody,” Abubakar said.
Later on Wednesday, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari visited the prison where senior officials gave him a tour of the facility. He later tweeted that he was “saddened” by the attack and “disappointed” by Nigeria’s intelligence system.
“How can terrorists organize themselves, have weapons, attack a security installation and get away?” Buhari asked.
“Very determined” insurgents attacked Kuje prison in Abuja on Tuesday evening with “very high-grade explosives”, killing a guard on duty, according to Shuaib Belgore, permanent secretary of Nigeria’s Ministry of Interior.
Security officers inspect items suspected of being explosives outside the medium security prison in Kuje, near Abuja, Nigeria, July 6, 2022. AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS
Explosions and gunfire were heard around 10 p.m. in the Kuye area as the attackers arrived and forced their way into the prison through a hole created by the blasts.
The Islamic extremist rebels who attacked the prison have been waging an insurgency in the country’s northeast for more than a decade. Their attack on the detention center freed many of their members who are inmates, prison officials said.
“We found out they are Boko Haram. They came specifically for their co-conspirators,” Belgor said.
Kuje maximum security prison had nearly 1,000 inmates, including 64 Boko Haram suspects, all of whom escaped, said Major General Bashir Salihi Magashi, Nigeria’s defense minister.
A view of burned vehicles after an attack on the outskirts of Kuje prison in the capital Abuja, Nigeria, July 6, 2022. Adam Abu-Bashal/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
He told reporters that security officers on the ground did their “best” to prevent a prison break. “We are trying to see what we can do to ensure that all the escapees are brought back,” he said.
As of Wednesday morning, bullets lay strewn around the prison as helicopters hovered over the Kuye area as security agents scoured nearby bushes for escapees. A number of vehicles were destroyed during the late night gunfight.
Some recaptured prisoners lay on the ground next to the prison entrance near the bodies of those killed in the attack.
The Abuja prison break happened around the same time gunmen launched a daring attack on a forward security convoy preparing for Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to the northwestern state of Katsina. Those attackers “opened fire on the convoy from ambush positions but were repulsed by the military,” a presidential spokesman said.
Nigerian jihadist rebels and other armed groups have carried out several prison breaks in the country’s northeast in recent years, but this is the first in the capital in recent years.
In 2021, more than 2,500 inmates were freed in three prison breaks. At least 4,307 inmates have escaped from prisons in Nigeria since 2017, Lagos-based online newspaper TheCable reported this month based on compiled media reports.
Most of the recent prison escapes in Nigeria appear unrelated, although the attacks were carried out in a similar fashion using explosives, according to security analysts. A large number of those who escaped such attacks are awaiting trial. Nigerian prisons hold 70,000 inmates, but only about 20,000, or 27 percent, are convicted, according to government figures.
Broken walls are seen at Kuje prison in Abuja, Nigeria, after a rebel attack allowed about 600 inmates to escape, July 6, 2022. Authorities said about 300 had been recaptured. Chinedu Asadu/AP
Nigeria’s extremist insurgency, waged by Boko Haram and an offshoot known as Islamic State West Africa Province, has been blamed for the violence, which has killed more than 35,000 people and displaced more than 2 million people, according to the United Nations. health services caused by the rebels indirectly caused the deaths of more than 300,000 additional people, the UN says
Extremist violence is the most serious security challenge in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country of 206 million people, which is also grappling with violence in the northwest by rebel herdsmen and a separatist movement in the south.
Prisons in Africa’s most populous country are often overcrowded. As many as 70% of prisoners are held in custody and can be held awaiting trial for years. An even bigger prison break took place in the southeastern state of Imo in April last year. It was not clear what group orchestrated the escape, but the region has long been a hotbed of Nigerian separatist groups and tensions between federal authorities and the local Igbo population there are often high.
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