Nigerian President Buhari described the interruption of the prison that released nearly 2,000 detainees as an “act of terrorism”

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Six of the 1,844 detainees who escaped from the Owerri Custody Center in Imo State have returned voluntarily, according to a spokesman for the Nigerian Correctional Service.

Thirty-five others chose not to flee during the attack, authorities said.

“The attackers who stormed the facility around 0215, Monday, April 5, 2021, entered the yard using explosives to blow up the administrative block,” said Francis Enobore, a spokesman for the Nigerian penitentiary service.

The Nigerian police force has accused the outlawed secessionist group, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and its paramilitary wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), of the attack.

Police said the gunmen, who stormed the state headquarters, were armed with a variety of sophisticated weapons and military hardware.

“The attackers’ attempt to gain access to the General Police Police Armory was totally and adequately resisted by the Nigerian Police Forces,” the force said in a statement on Monday, adding that no lives were lost in the incident.

The government of Imo Hope Uzodinma, the center, is inspecting the site of an attack at the police headquarters in Owerri, Nigeria, on Monday, April 5, 2021.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who is currently on a medical visit to the United Kingdom, described the simultaneous attacks as “an act of terrorism, “in a statement posted by its spokesman Garba Shehu.

Buhari also directed law enforcement agencies in the country to catch fugitive detainees and arrest perpetrators who are “believed to be deadly criminals,” the president said.

Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the separatist group, IPOB, denied the organization’s involvement in the attacks.

He told CNN: “We have no hand in what happened in Owerri, Imo State. Having said that, we acknowledge and acknowledge the anger, resentment and injustice that many people feel – especially those young people, “he said. said.

“So what is happening now is that people are trying to avenge the deaths of their loved ones at the hands of Nigerian security services. Some people, I think, have taken it upon themselves to say, ‘is enough. Wherever a government allows injustice, it only invites anarchy, Kanu added.

Nigerian officers have killed 150 peaceful protesters, according to the Amnesty report
The IPOB was banned and designated a terrorist organization in 2017 by the Nigerian government, after its persistent demands for independence fueled periodic clashes with security forces – leading to the loss of lives.

The Buhari regime continued to thwart IPOB activities, fearing that an escalation of secessionism – especially in the group’s strongholds in eastern Nigeria – could spark another Nigeria-Biafra civil war.

In a 2016 report, Amnesty International accused Nigerian security forces of plotting to kill dozens of unarmed pro-Biafra protesters. The claims were rejected by the Nigerian army at the time.
In 1967, a high-ranking military officer – Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu – led the separatist republic of Biafra, a sculpted secessionist state in southeastern Nigeria.

It led to a bitter civil war from 1967 to 1970 and over a million people starved to death as a result of the war.

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