Many more inmates are on the loose following a downpour that destroyed the fence of the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Suleja, Niger State, on April 24.  The 250-capacity centre is located “about 80km” from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. The authorities said 119 inmates at the facility fled into the night. The facility, said to have been built during the colonial era, was described as old and weak.

Police said only 13 of the escapees had been recaptured. This means that more than 100 escapees are at large. The FCT Commissioner of Police (CP), Benneth Igweh, vowed to do everything in his power to recapture them. The situation calls for action, not words.

Early this year, it was reported that about 4,000 escapees from Nigeria’s correctional centres in 2021 and 2022 had not been recaptured. It was alarming. That may well have been a conservative estimate. The figure was from at least eight jailbreaks across the country in those years.

 At the time, Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) spokesperson Abubakar Umar was reported saying, “For the purpose of being very sure and exact about the figure, we cannot for now ascertain the number of fleeing inmates, but we are making efforts to do that.”  This showed poor record keeping. It was inexcusable that the agency did not know how many prisoners were on the loose. 

 The NCoS spokesperson had bragged that there were no jailbreaks and prison attacks in 2023, attributing the “achievement” to “the effectiveness of the top-level security measures that have been diligently upheld in our custodial centres across the nation.” The Suleja jailbreak contradicted the claimed improved security at the country’s prisons. Indeed, it further exposed poor security at the country’s correctional centres.

The history of jailbreaks in the country shows that there were 18 cases from 2015 to 2022. A December 2021 report said 5,238 inmates escaped from various prisons across Nigeria within a one-year period from October 2020. It is unclear how many of these escapees were recaptured.

The Suleja jailbreak compounded a bad situation. With more inmates on the loose,  and many of them believed to pose a serious danger to society, there is a threatening atmosphere that worsens the country’s security crisis. Their escape also defeats the essence of justice.

The increasing number of prison escapees not recaptured calls into question the capability of the country’s security agencies. Their failure to recapture the inmates on the run reflects ineffectiveness.