Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, has charged security agencies manning the custodial centres across the country to remain vigilant and continually remain on the watch to be able to defeat criminal elements terrorising the country.
Aregbesola gave this charge on Tuesday when he paid a surprise visit to the Kirikiri maximum and medium-security custodial centres in Kirikiri, Apapa, Lagos state.
“We must equally charge them to remain eternally vigilant and continuously evolve strategies. And to define these strategies, we have to make decisions based not on fear, but on hard-earned wisdom.
“I have also informed our officers and men here that they must fight to defend our institutions, territory and constitution.
“It also applies to all others wherever they are posted in Nigeria. The ragtag groups of opportunists must not be allowed to attack our institutions and get away. They must not live to tell the story,” Ogbeni Aregbesola stated in a statement by his media aide Sola Fasure.
Over 800 inmates, including 64 Boko Haram suspects, escaped last week when gunmen attacked the Medium Security Custodial Centre in Kuje.
But the minister said the country was on the path to totally defeating Boko Haram terrorists and other criminals ravaging the country, stating that many of them have been arrested, especially in the northeast.
“Today, a core of the criminal elements and insurgents across the country is on a path to defeat, they have been heavily degraded. Over 61,000 of them are in our custody in the North-East.
“Our assurance to Nigerians is that we shall rise above these challenges and emerge stronger and more resilient,” the Minister assured.
On the part of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), the Minister directed that the management of the Service should improve its efforts on intelligence gathering and acting on such information garnered, saying it is the panacea to solving the problem of incessant custodial centres attacks.
“So far, no jailbreak by inmates has been successful, we have successfully quelled all of them.
“What we have reoccurring since the #EndSars protests of October 2020, has been a mass of people attacking our facilities from outside and setting the inmates free.
“However, I have now directed the Controller General of the NCoS to double his efforts on intelligence gathering to fortify and prevent breaches to the custodial centres beyond the use of arms and force,” Aregbesola said.
