Minister of Interior Rauf Aregbesola has urged the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS) to track and recapture all escaped prison inmates roaming Nigeria and other areas.
This is contained in a statement by the minister’s media aide Sola Fasure.

MrAregbesola made the call at the opening of a two-day retreat for senior management of the service in Sokoto.

He said the strategies and deliberations at the retreat should be centered around solutions on recapturing all escaped inmates to safeguard communities who might become prey to criminal activities of escaped inmates.

The minister blamed #EndSARS protests for fuelling attacks on prisons.

”Retreats are for bonding, contemplating purpose and setting future goals. Therefore, the major issue that must be considered during this retreat is the de-congestion of custodial facilities,” he stated.

Mr Aregbesola recalled that during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the policies, quickly put in place then was the decongestion programme under which thousands of inmates were released on compassionate ground.

“The follow-up to that is the consideration that we should find further ways to keep decongesting our facilities,” noted the minister. “We started work on the idea of compiling the list of convicted inmates serving light terms for not too serious offences, who were in custody because they could not pay their fines.”

Mr Aregbesola also commended the service for being able to manage the centres during the pandemic without recording a single infection.

The minister urged that as the officers deliberate, strategise and set target for the next five years, it must ensure that the bio-data of all inmates were harmonised with sister agencies

This, he said, such as the Nigeria Financial Unit (NFIU), all banks and the INTERPOL to track all escaped inmates.

“It is also very important to have their fingerprints, pictures and other details you have with you to be harmonised with them.”

Last November, Mr Aregbesola said about 3,906 inmates who escaped during recent attacks on prisons were still at large. He said 4,369 inmates escaped from prisons in 2020, following attacks by gunmen and disclosed that only 984 had been rearrested.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime said the biometrics of all custodial inmates in Nigeria had been taken while working with the International Police (INTERPOL).

“How long can they continue to run from the state? The state is a patient bird. You can run but you can never hide. We have their biometrics. Whenever and wherever they appear to transact any business, their cover will be blown,” said Mr Aregbesola.

(NAN)