Champion Newspapers Limited
For a better society

Kuje Prison Attack: Al’Mustapha, others call for stringent measures to stop frequent jail breaks

48
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

CYRIL MBAH, Abuja

 

General Sani Abacha’s Chief Security Officer, retired Major Hamza Al’Mustapha and political stakeholders in Kuje Area Council have blamed lack of modern surveillance equipment, laxity by policy makers and negligence by security personnel in charge of Kuje Medium Security Custodial Centre for the recent attack on the facility which resulted in the escape of many detainees including hardened criminals.

The critical stakeholders decried a situation whereby nobody was prosecuted or held accountable for previous jail breaks and also pointed out that the absence of punishment helped to fuel incessant attacks by criminals on prisons.

Al’Mustapha, who spoke during a recent Radio Nigeria phone-in programme monitored in Abuja, said it was strategically wrong and a high security risk to keep more than fifty Boko Haram fighters in one location for too long without proper supervision, psychological re-programming or speedy trial in competent courts.

The former military intelligence officer, who was once detained at the Kuje correctional facility, explained that while at the prison, he noticed that the Boko Haram ex-fighters exhibited abnormal behavioural patterns associated with frequent use of extreme mind-altering hard drugs and bad indoctrination from their leaders.

He said it would have been better for the nation to establish different detention facilities for Boko Haram suspects who, he described as mentally unstable, irritable, always withdrawn at the prison and prone to violence.

Al’Mustapha said: “When I was at Kirikiri around 2009 and again at the Kuje Correctional Centre between 2001 until 2002, the former NSA brought in more than 138 Boko Haram Terrorists, who were captured. In the first year, none among them cooperated in our effort to interrogate them but gradually they relaxed and we extracted tonnes of information from them.

“The question now is what has the government done with the information obtained from the numerous interrogations conducted from November 1998 to date?

“The intelligence obtained should have been useful to the nation to ascertain their exact sources of funding, sources of weapons and drug supply, the source of technological support such as the sophisticated communication equipment and mobile phones used by the terrorists in their operations.

“Many questions need answers for people to understand what is happening. For example, we need to identify their foreign connection and who are the mediators. What are the sources of their logistics? The first mistake was to keep a large number of terrorists in one place. It is wrong and I wrote to the NSA to tell him so but no action was taken.”

Al’Mustapha, a presidential candidate of the Action Alliance [AA] for the 2023 general election called for proper screening of security personnel charged with guarding high risk detainees such as insurgents, adding “we need first to rehabilitate what we have from the military to the para-military including the police.

“We also need to devise a means of effectively monitoring our rivers, streams, forests, hills and mountains where these terrorists live. There is total negligence everywhere. What we have in the country today is a shame and it robs off negatively on Nigeria’s ability to provide leadership for Africa,” he declared while also promising to correct the anomalies when elected president.

On their part, two politicians who were former chairmen of Kuje Area Council expressed concern over the ease with which armed terrorists successfully invaded the Medium Security Custodial Centre in large numbers to attack and free several detainees without being noticed or stopped.

In separate interviews, the two former chairmen, Alhaji Abdullahi Galadima and Chief Danladi Etsu Zingh called on the Federal  Government to beef-up security within the council to forestall any further ugly incident from escaped prisoners or their members as residents of the council  now live in fear.

While Etsu Zingh described the attack as an embarrassment to the government and the nation, Galadima, the immediate past Chairman of Kuje said residents of the council are now apprehensive of another attack from the escaped detainees.

The stakeholders appealed for thorough review of available security plans in the area council to help authorities improve on the arrangements, including the removal of security personnel who have overstayed, where necessary.

 

For a better society

Comments are closed.