By Dr. Ugoji Egbujo
A bunch of scrawny terrorists waltzed into our federal capital territory on motorbikes, barged into our prisons, took back their imprisoned colleagues and disappeared.
Nothing has been heard of them since. They didn’t leave in a hurry, yet they left practically unchallenged. They left our Commander-In-Chief bamboozled, asking puerile questions, questioning his own ability to put square pegs in square holes.
The rape of Kuje prisons by those outlaws is the height of our growing impotence. No resident of Abuja could have imagined that a federal security institution could be so casually violated without a whimper from those perpetually swaggering folks protecting the President. Despite the NDA attack, where our military officers were taken from their bedrooms by hoodlums, Kuje is the confirmation that our sovereignty is in tatters. Shredded by incompetence, corruption and insurgencies.
Barely three months after the same rabid chaps bombed the Abuja- Kaduna trains and kidnapped commuters and left government officials bickering about CCTV, they have upped their devilish game, and we are still dozing. After that train attack, politicians searched for and found a scapegoat in the transport minister. The governor of Kaduna threw his hands into the sky and lamented that he had asked the minister to stop running evening trains. Perhaps the governor can now tell the Interior Minister to relocate the prisons to Ghana. Then after the prisons, it could be the federal ministries moving to South Africa for safety.
Last year, when a bunch of delusional fellows descended on Owerri at night and broke the prisons, we marvelled at the ease of such criminality. Because prisons, even medium security prisons, in Banana republics, should be fortresses. The Owerri swarm had come in buses from many towns. Some of them could only find sticks. They gathered at the Imo police headquarters and set it ablaze before visiting the prison, chanting songs. At the prisons, they broke the doors and told the inmates they were evangelists. They sang choruses and set the captives free. Then they went into their hired buses and departed. All the security agencies in Owerri, who were all within a ten-minute night-time driving radius from that crusade, stayed asleep.
Since Owerri, other prisons have suffered similar defilements. But Oyo must be the forerunner of Kuje. In Oyo, the bandits of the northwest came to retrieve their warrior colleagues kept in that prison for committing mass murders. They came into the faculty with ease and left without haste. When they left, government officials made half noises about the security of the prisons.
It’s difficult to tell why extremely violent criminals that belong to terrorist gangs are kept in medium-security prisons. The laxity is inexplicable given the haemorrhage in lives and livelihoods the nation has suffered at the hands of the vampires. For our gallant but bruised soldiers who have lost limbs and compatriots and suffered for the nation, the loss of captured demons must be particularly heart-
wrenching. Because if a struggling nation with millions of hungry children can spare hundreds of millions of dollars to buy Tucanos from America, then it should be able to build lonely maximum-security prisons in distant deserts and islands where street urchins on okadas and danfos cannot visit.
If the prisons within the President’s perimeter can fall so cheaply and leak the most poisonous inmates, then we must worry about sabotage. Because if our security forces have been infiltrated by the enemy, our redemption could be far-fetched. From all sides, Kuje was disastrous. But it must be a wake-up call.
Our house is on fire. We must find urgency and wisdom.
If the prisons within the President’s perimeter can fall so cheaply and leak the most poisonous inmates, then we must worry about sabotage
They left our Commander-In-Chief bamboozled, asking puerile questions, questioning his own ability to put square pegs in square holes.
