Nigerian President Buhari describes the break with the prison that released nearly 2,000 prisoners as an “act of terrorism”

by

Six of the 1,844 inmates who escaped from the Owerri Custody Center, Imo State, have returned voluntarily, according to a Nigeria Correctional Service spokesman.

Thirty-five more people chose not to flee during the attack, authorities said.

“Attackers who stormed the facility around 2:15 a.m. on Monday, April 5, 2021, entered the garden using the explosive to blow up the administrative block,” said Francis Enobore, a spokesman for the prison service. Nigerian.

The Nigerian Police Force has blamed the attack on the outlawed secessionist group, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and its paramilitary wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN).

Police said the gunmen, who had also stormed the state headquarters, were armed with a variety of sophisticated weapons and military hardware.

“The Nigerian police force fully and adequately resisted the attackers’ attempt to gain access to the police armory at headquarters,” the body said in a statement on Monday, adding that no lives were lost in the incident.

Imo State Government Hope Uzodinma inspects the site of an attack on the police headquarters in Owerri, Nigeria, on Monday, April 5, 2021.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who is currently on a medical visit to the UK, described the simultaneous attacks as “an act of terrorism“, in a statement issued by its spokesman Garba Shehu.

Buhari also ordered the country’s police agencies to arrest fugitive prisoners and arrest perpetrators who are “believed to be deadly criminals,” the president said.

Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the separatist group, IPOB, has denied the organization’s involvement in the attacks.

He told CNN: “We have no hand in what happened in Owerri, Imo State. That said, we recognize and acknowledge the anger, resentment and sense of injustice that many people feel, especially the younger ones. “, he said. dit.

“So what happens now is that people are trying to avenge the death of their loved ones at the hands of the Nigerian security services. Some people, I think, took it upon themselves to say ‘enough is enough.’ Wherever a government allows injustice to sink, they only invite anarchy, Kanu added.

Nigerian officials killed 150 peaceful protesters, according to the Amnesty report
The Nigerian government banned IPOB and appointed a terrorist organization in 2017 after its persistent demands for independence fueled periodic clashes with security forces, resulting in the loss of lives.

The Buhari regime has continued to curb the activities of the IPOB, fearing that an escalation of secessionism, particularly in the group’s strongholds in eastern Nigeria, could spark another civil war between Nigeria and Biafra.

In a 2016 report, Amnesty International accused Nigerian security forces of having considered the killing of dozens of pro-Biafra pro-armed protesters. The allegations were denied by the Nigerian army at the time.
In 1967, a high-ranking military officer – Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu – led the separatist republic of Biafra, a secessionist state excavated in southeastern Nigeria.

It provoked a bitter civil war from 1967 to 1970 and more than a million people starved to death after the war.

.Source