Kuje jailbreak: Group asks Buhari to sack Aregbesola, investigate soldiers withdrawal

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, urgently over his failure to halt attacks on Nigerian prisons.

The National Coordinator of the association, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said in a statement on Thursday that it was distasteful and condemnable that over 15 jailbreaks have happened under Aregbesola in the last five years resulting in over 3,000 inmates escaping.

HURIWA appealed to the president to stop asking rhetorical questions on social media on how the intelligence system of the country failed to detect Tuesday’s attack at Kuje prison in Abuja.

According to HURIWA, the President must set up judicial panel of inquiry on prison breaks in Nigeria with a view to ascertain that similar attacks on the entire security apparatus of Nigeria do not happen again.

Recall that terrorists attack the Kuje Correctional Centre on Tuesday evening, bombed the prison, killed some security agents and inmates while they set over 600 prisoners free including 64 Boko Haram suspects.

According to media reports, soldiers deployed to Kuje vicinity and the Correctional Center’s environment, who had mastered the terrain, were redeployed 24 hours before the dastard attack.

In fact, Tukur Mamu, a media aide to controversial Islamic cleric and bandit-sympathiser and negotiator, Ahmad Gumi, said the Kuje prison attackers were members of the Ansaru terrorist group who launched attack and kidnapped scores of passengers in Abuja-Kaduna bound train on March 28.

Reacting, HURIWA’s Onwubiko said, “The spate of jailbreaks under President Muhammadu Buhari and Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, is alarming and condemnable. Even under then President Goodluck Jonathan who had no military experience or background, jailbreaks weren’t as rampant as what Nigerians see these days.

“The frequent and recurring jailbreaks show the inefficiency of all those President Buhari appointed into office and his unwillingness to sack them show also that the President tacitly wants the situation to continue to fester.

“HURIWA demands the arrest of the persons who gave the order purportedly for the withdrawal of soldiers before the attack.”

Daily Post reports that the group also demands the sacking of “the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola; and his Defence counterpart, Bashir Magashi; for perpetual incompetence. We also call for a broad-based judicial panel of inquiry on prison breaks in Nigeria to be constituted.”