Residents of the Federal Capital Territory were on Tuesday night thrown into panic following the news of the terrorists attack on the Kuje Medium Security Custodial Centre.
The attack, in which process many insurgents and inmates were reportedly freed by the terrorists who were said to be heavily armed with sophisticated weapons, came at a time the country is already bedeviled by insecurity across various quarters.
This necessitated the visit by the leadership of the Nigerian Senate, led by the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Lawan. The delegation which includes the Minority Whip and Vice Chairman Senate Committee on National Security and Intelligence, Distinguished Senator Chukwuka Utazi, arrived the Kuje Correctional Facility on Thursday to ascertain the level of damage done.
In a Statement by the Special Assistant (Press) to the Senate President, Dr. Ezrel Tabiowo, the Senate delegation was taken round the attacked facility by the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Correctional Service, Mr. Haliru Nababa, who told them that an estimated 300 terrorists stormed the Correctional Facility on foot to carry out the attack.
The Senate delegation expressed disappointment that the Kuje Medium Security Custodial Centre does not have Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras mounted anywhere around the facility to track activities around it. They said that if there were CCTV cameras around, it would have recorded and given details of what happened and aid the process of investigation and arrests.
The Senate President also insisted that an attack on the Kuje Correctional Facility; a Medium Security Custodial Centre, situated in the Nation’s Capital, couldn’t have been possible without the collaboration of an insider or insiders within the Correctional Service. He added that the attack is a sign of failure of security systems in the country. He wondered why the security agencies in the FCT could not gather intelligence report on the presence of the terrorists whom, by their reported number and mode of invasion into the facility, suggests they may have taken a week, a month or more to plan their attack.
He said that the security agencies should have detected their presence and movements from their tracking systems in the FCT.
Earlier in his briefing, the Commanding Officer, Nigerian Army Battalion, Gwagwalada, Lieutenant Colonel Adisa, told the lawmakers that only a total of fifty security personnel were on duty when the terrorists numbering about three hundred and armed with IEDs, stormed the facility and unleashed their attack – freeing their members in the facility and causing many other inmates to escape.
The Senate mandated the security agencies to ensure that the insurgents who escaped from the correctional facility are found and reinstated to the centre, noting that their presence within the streets of the FCT pose serious security threat to the Nation’s Capital, which has the seat of government.
To forestall the reoccurrence of such unfortunate incident, the Senate mandated the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Correctional Service to include the request for CCTV at the maximum and medium custodial centres of the Country in the year 2023 budget.
The Senate President stated that proper investigation shall be made in order to fish out the culprits and sanction them accordingly.
Amidst the heightened insecurity in the country, it now behoves on the security agencies to step up the tempo, especially in the area of intelligence gathering. This has been the stand of the Senate Minority Whip and Vice Chairman Senate Committee on National Security and Intelligence, Distinguished Senator Chukwuka Utazi.
