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No fewer than 100 personnel of the Nigerian Correctional Service have been sanctioned for various offences between February 18, 2021, and September 20, 2022. They were penalised for trafficking drugs into custodial centres, negligence of duty and absenteeism, among others.
No official had, however, been sanctioned concerning the series of jailbreaks recorded by the service.
No fewer than five incidents of jailbreak occurred between 2021 and 2022, resulting in the escape of hundreds of inmates, including convicted felons.
Speaking with our correspondent on Thursday, the spokesperson of the service, Abubakar Umar, stated that some of the personnel were dismissed after being found culpable.
He said, “Since his assumption in office, the Controller-General of Corrections has sanctioned over 100 staff members for various offences, including trafficking, negligence of duty, absenteeism, and other offences.
“While the Controller General of Corrections holds the welfare of staff members and inmates in high regard, he takes exception to trafficking and any other acts that are inimical to the security of our custodial centres.”
Umar, however, said none of its staff members had been found culpable for the jail attacks witnessed in the country. He insisted that allegations of complicity were not true.
“On the issue of the complicity of our staff members in jail attacks, we do not have such staff in any of our facilities. It is just a speculation which is not true,” he said.
A member of the International Security Association from Switzerland, Jackson Ojo, in an interview with The PUNCH, questioned the correctional service’s claim of exoneration in jailbreaks.
He said, “The investigation done by the service to arrive at this is faulty; that nobody was found culpable is far from the truth.
“There was no restriction or any form of resistance in many of these attacks especially that of Kuje, where they were aware that the criminals were coming and they operated successfully for hours and you are telling me nobody was complicit.
“In saner climes, a lot of their officers would have been in jail by now.”
Another security expert, Timothy Avele, said an external body should be allowed to investigate the attacks on the custodial centres to determine the culpability of the personnel or otherwise.
He said, “The jail attacks are a national embarrassment that cannot be carried out without complicity. I don’t think the government wanted to sanction anyone because you can’t investigate yourself.
“The government should have established an external body if it wanted officials of NCoS and its supervising ministry to be held accountable and to prevent future occurrences of this type of embarrassing incident.”
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