More than 1,800 detainees escaped Monday (April 5th) from a prison in Imo State, in south-eastern Nigeria, after an attack by “Armed men”, said the Nigerian prison service.
“Owerri prison […] was attacked around 2:15 am Monday by unidentified armed men, who forcibly released 1,844 detainees ”Nigerian Prison Service spokesperson Francis Enobore said in a statement. “Witnesses said they saw a large number of armed men on board pick-ups […], they immediately attacked the prison staff, before blowing up the main door ”, explains this press release.
For his part, the communications officer of Imo State prisons, James Madugba, confirmed the attack and claimed that “The situation is under control”, inviting residents to “Continue to go about their business”. Neighboring Abia state has implemented a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew following the attack, the largest on a prison in the country’s recent history.
A new Biafran militia
President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attack, calling its perpetrators “Terrorists” and D’“Anarchists”, without however naming The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the independence group of Biafra, where the State of Imo is located. The IPOB still displays separatist overtones and recently showed very impressive videos of a new militia, dubbed the “Eastern Security Network”, in which we can see dozens, even hundreds of fighters in training. At the end of January, violence had broken out between the army and local communities, killing at least one.
Tensions remain strong between the Biafran independence groups and the central power, fifty years after the terrible civil war (1967-1970) which killed nearly a million people, mostly from the Igbo ethnic group. Nonetheless, group spokesperson Emma Powerful denied any connection to the latest attack in a statement sent to AFP, calling any information accusing them of “Lies” and “Fallacious”.
The Nigerian justice system is particularly corrupt and slow, and more than 70% of detainees have never had a trial. Tens of thousands of them languish, forgotten, behind prison bars across the country. In October 2020, during demonstrations against police violence that had degenerated into riots, several prisons in Lagos State were attacked but no detainee had managed to escape, according to the authorities.