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 handed over to police stations. Officials will “track all escaped prisoners and return them to custody,” Abubakar said. Later on Wednesday, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari visited the prison where his senior officials toured the facility. He later tweeted that he was “saddened” by the attack and “disappointed” with Nigeria’s intelligence system. “How can terrorists be organized, have weapons, attack a security facility and get away with it?” Buhari asked. “Very determined” insurgents attacked Kuje Prison in Abuja on Tuesday night with “very high quality explosives”, killing a guard on duty, according to Shuaib Belgore, permanent secretary of Nigeria’s Ministry of Interior. Security officers inspect items suspected to be explosives outside the medium security prison in Kuje, near Abuja, Nigeria, July 6, 2022. AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS Explosions and gunfire were heard around 10pm in the Kuje area when the attackers arrived and forced their way into the prison through a hole created by the explosions. The Islamist 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 incarcerated, prison officials said. “We understand it is Boko Haram. They came specifically for their co-conspirators,” Belgore said. Kuje maximum security prison held nearly 1,000 inmates, including 64 suspected Boko Haram extremists, all of whom have escaped, said Lt. Gen. Bashir Salihi Magashi, Nigeria’s defense minister. A view of burnt vehicles after an attack on Kuje prison on the outskirts of the capital Abuja, Nigeria on July 6, 2022. Adam Abu-bashal/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images He told reporters that security officials on the ground were doing “everything they could” to prevent the jailbreak. “We are trying to see what we can do to ensure that all the escapees are returned,” he said. As of Wednesday morning, shell casings were scattered around the prison premises, while helicopters hovered over the Kuje area as security agents combed the nearby bushes for escapees. Several vehicles were flattened during the late night shooting. Some prisoners being recaptured lay on the ground at the entrance to the prison near the bodies of those who died in the attack. The Abuja outpost happened around the same time gunmen launched a daring attack on a security convoy preparing for the visit of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to the northwestern state of Katsina. Those attackers “opened fire on the convoy from ambush positions but were repulsed by the army,” a presidential spokesman said. Nigeria’s jihadist rebels and other armed groups have carried out several arrests 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 prisoners were released in three jailbreaks. At least 4,307 inmates have escaped from Nigerian prisons since 2017, Lagos-based online newspaper TheCable reported this month, based on media reports. Most of the recent jailbreaks in Nigeria appear unrelated, although the attacks are carried out in a similar fashion using explosives, according to security analysts. A large number of those who have escaped such attacks were awaiting trial. Nigeria’s prisons hold 70,000 inmates, but only about 20,000, or 27 percent, have been sentenced, 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. Officials said about 300 were recaptured. Chinedu Asadu/AP Nigeria’s extremist insurgency, waged by Boko Haram and an offshoot known as Islamic State’s West Africa Province, is blamed for violence that has killed more than 35,000 people and displaced more than 2 million, according to the U.N. prolonged instability, hunger and lack of health services caused by the insurgency have 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 battling violence in the northwest region by rebel herdsmen and a separatist movement in the country’s south. Prisons in Africa’s most populous country are often overcrowded. 70% of prisoners are on remand and can be held awaiting trial for years. An even bigger jailbreak took place in the south-eastern state of Imo in April last year. It was unclear which group orchestrated the escape, but the region has long been a hotbed for Nigerian separatist groups, and tensions between federal authorities and the indigenous Igbo population there are often high. A look at Camp Lemonnier Djibouti, the only US military base in Africa 03:32 More
