Hundreds of prisoners, including several dozen jihadists, were able to escape after an assault on a prison in the suburbs of Abuja.
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The attack on a penitentiary located in the suburbs of Abuja, the political capital of Nigeria, allowed the escape of nearly 900 prisoners, including around sixty Boko Haram jihadists. This operation, the first of its kind near the capital, illustrates the almost generalized insecurity in the most populous country in Africa. The Head of State Muhammadu Buhari himself seems overwhelmed by the situation. “How can terrorists organize themselves, have weapons, attack a security infrastructure and get away with it?”he said in a statement issued on July 6, 2022, the day after the attack.
On the evening of July 5, around 300 armed men attacked around 10 p.m. (local time) a prison in the town of Kuje, 40 km from Abuja and the presidential residence. The raid, carried out with explosives and automatic weapons, allowed 64 jihadists to escape. None of them could be found while the majority of the detainees were “recovered”, according to prison authorities. This unprecedented operation in the capital was claimed by the Islamic State organization in West Africa (Iswap). Born of a split from Boko Haram, as its name suggests, the group has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organization. It is mainly active in northeastern Nigeria and the greater Lake Chad region.
This is not the first time that terrorist groups or armed bandits have plagued Nigeria. Unfortunately, insecurity is recurrent there. The attacks are most often perpetrated in the rural area of the northeast and in the center where several armed groups and criminal gangs have been established for years. But this time, the raid takes place very close to the capital where armed men carried out a spectacular operation. President Muhammadu Buhari could only see the damage and said to himself “disappointed” of the prison intelligence system. The reaction of the Head of State calls out when we expect answers from him to fight against insecurity.
In another disturbing incident, hours before the raid on the prison, armed men ambushed a convoy including the president’s security officers, in a town in the northwestern state of Katsuna. . A region infested with heavily armed criminal gangs.