Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, says the federal government has foiled more jailbreak attempts after the Kuje incident.
Aregbesola, however, stressed that most of the culprits were “sent to their Maker.” He spoke at the 64th ministerial briefing anchored by the Presidential Communications Team, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The minister, who declined to give details of the centres where the attempts were made, added that henceforth, it would be impossible for escaped prisoners to hide, as biometric details of all inmates in the country have already been captured.
More than 400 prisoners went missing after the attack on the Kuje correctional centre in July, last year. Four inmates, a security guard and several attackers were reportedly killed in the incident.
“It is no longer game as usual. We are equipping our men to, on their own, defend those facilities. And sister agencies are equally upping their capacity to protect and defend our facilities. And we’re improving the design of our facilities to make them almost impregnable,” he explained.
Speaking on the Kuje incident, the former Osun governor said it had been difficult to recapture “many” missing inmates but added that he was confident they would soon be caught as their biometrics have been registered in the system.
“As at today, there’s no single inmate of our facilities that is not captured biomedically and that is the best we can do. We’re still working on DNA, which is another way of identifying them,” he said.
“We have met with all agencies, and institutions that can use the biometrics we have to trace and arrest them. They are doing their best. The most effective agency in capturing them is still the police force. They are doing wonderfully well.
“The technology that we expected will be effective in capturing them is not as effective. Like I would normally tell people, they can only run they cannot hide. If they go out of circulation for now but because they cannot change their biometrics, whenever they come out, they will be exposed and therefore arrested if they have not died.
“There is no international airport that you will go to today that you will not have photographs of all these people. They are on our website, papers carried them, they are on social media platforms.”
