Army Speaks On Kuje Jailbreak .

Nigerian Army says it repeatedly wrote to the Comptroller General of the Correctional Service warning of dangers before the July 5, 2022, jailbreak at the Kuje Custodian Centre in Abuja, where over 900 inmates escaped.

The army said, the jailbreak could be linked to the lack of Close Circuit Television Cameras coupled with the low perimeter fence at the facility.

The Army disclosed this during the investigation instituted by the House of Representatives’ Joint Committees on Reformatory Institutions, Justice, Police Affairs, Interior, and Human Rights to ascertain the whereabouts of inmates who escaped from the Abuja Correctional Centre.

Assistant Director, Commercial Law, Army Directorate of Legal Services, Major Peter Ogbuinya, said after the prison break, the army “observed that the place where Kuje prison is located is more of a built-up area.

Ogbuinya, who represented the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja also said,  the Nigerian Army was only playing a complementary role to the correctional centres by way of assistance, while, the army is not the only security agency deployed to Kuje prison.

On his part, the Assistant Commandant General, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Philip Ayuba, asked the committee to look into how lawyers who are in the National Youth Service Corps could be engaged in providing services for prisoners, and emphasized the need for the adoption of alternative conflict resolution as a means of decongesting correctional centres.