Lawan laments the absence of CCTV after an ISWAP attack in Kuje prison.

Ahmad Lawan, the president of the Senate, expressed dissatisfaction on Thursday with the absence of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at the Kuje detention facility in Abuja.

On Tuesday night, members of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) assaulted the prison and released nearly 800 convicts, including 64 militants who had been jailed there.

The incident resulted in the deaths of four people, including a member of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) staff.

Lawan questioned whether other smaller correctional facilities across the nation have CCTV after leading a delegation of the Senate leadership to inspect the facility’s level of damage.

He claimed that the assault on the Kuje jail was unequivocal proof that Nigeria’s security system had broken down.

The Senate president said “The attack on this correctional facility is symptomatic of the failure of security architecture. The attack is only a culmination of the failure of security systems.

“We were told that an estimated 300 terrorists attacked this facility. They came on foot, and I believe they should have been detected.

“In the first place, 300 people will not come for an operation like this without planning. Planning must have taken a week, a month or a bit more.

“I believe that our security agencies should have picked this from their tracking systems in the FCT.

“Secondly, having gone round the facility itself, we are disappointed that this facility does not have Closed Circuit Television cameras, something that would record and give you details of what is happening and sometimes record the events.

“This is a medium security custodial center, how on earth do we have facility of this magnitude in the FCT and we don’t have CCTV? It means we can say that all other medium security centers across the country do not have CCTV.

“We have asked the Comptroller-General of Correctional Centre to ensure that the requests for CCTV at the maximum and medium custodial centres of the country are included in their 2023 budget because this is essential and indispensable.

“Now, as this facility lacks a functional CCTV, there’s no record of what happened, except narration. But if we had CCTV, at least the records would have been there and analysis made, and arrest will be based on the information from the CCTV.”