More than 1,800 inmates escaped Monday from a prison in Imo state in southeastern Nigeria after an attack by “armed men”, Nigerian prison services said.
“Owerri prison […] was attacked around 2:15 am on Monday by unidentified armed men who forcibly released 1,844 detainees, ”Nigerian prison service spokesman 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, ”the statement explains.
For his part, the communications officer of Imo State prisons, James Madugba, confirmed the attack and said that the “situation under control”, urging 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.
The president, Muhammadu Buhari, condemned this attack, calling its perpetrators “terrorists” and “anarchists”, without however naming the IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra), the independence group of Biafra, where the state is located. of Imo.
The IPOB movement still displays separatist tendencies, and it recently showed very impressive videos of a new militia (called the Eastern Security Network, ESN), 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, 50 years after the terrible civil war (1967-1970) which killed nearly a million people, mostly from the Igbo ethnic group.
Nevertheless, the spokesperson for the group Emma Powerful refuted any link with this latest attack, in a statement sent to AFP, calling any information accusing them of “false” and “spurious”.
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.
Last October, during protests against police violence that degenerated into riots, several prisons in Lagos state were attacked, but no detainees managed to escape, authorities said.
