Attack on Imo Correctional Service: PRO narrates what transpired

The Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Correctional Service, Imo State command, Goodluck Uboegbulam has narrated what happened at the facility.

Uboegbulam disclosed this Tuesday on air during an interview session pertaining the attack

Hear him, “As at about 5:30am on Monday morning, a group of armed men came into the Correctional Service Farm Settlement in Okigwe on motorbikes, numbering about eight, and each of the bikes carried two persons that were all armed. They surrounded the men that were on duty that day, took them into the farm center, opened up the place and freed the Seven inmates that were there. They took the officer in charge along with them, took the inmates to a certain spot, made sure the inmates had all left before they entered their bikes and went away.

“The Police officer that was killed is not an officer attached to the farm settlement but to the legislator representing Okigwe Senatorial Zone (Senator Patrick Ndubeze) at his home in Okigwe, which was also attacked.

“A farm centre houses inmate with minor offences and have few months (3 or lesser months) to be set free. The essence of the farm settlement is to get the inmates engaged in agricultural activities which is one of our core mandates; get them trained in production of agricultural produce so by the time they leave the custody they can be useful to themselves.

“So I wonder why any sensible human being should see reasons to attack such facility seeing what we do for the inmates. These inmates are people rejected by the society and we are doing as much as we can to bring them back into the main stream of life, but the issue is that from time to time, you see this unscrupulous elements making these inmates go back into what they have vowed to leave.

“The Nigerian Correctional Services Imo chapter has taken steps towards tackling the issue as since that yesterday we have been gathering information and looking into the details of the inmates that were forcefully freed. We have also made efforts to get in touch with our sister agencies; Police, Military, Immigration and Civil Defense to ensure that those inmates are quickly captured as we have all there data, and so will soon post all there pictures on the internet to make people know that they are wanted, ‘ Uboegbulam assured’.

Responding to why they were not able to repel such attack, he stated, “We have improved security within and around the settlement premises, but you know some of these things that happen are sometimes beyond our control. Generally, insecurity has been a major challenge in the whole country, but all the security agencies are putting heads together to ensure that incidences of such nature does not occur again in the country.

It would be recalled that few years ago in 2021, there was a major attack on the Correctional Headquarters here in Owerri, where thousands of inmates were freed and now this, where 7 inmates were freed.