The Federal Government may relocate many prisons from city centres because of the growing urbanisation in the country.
The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, gave this indication on Thursday during a visit to the Suleja Medium Security Custodial Centre in Niger State, where 105 inmates escaped in a jailbreak on Wednesday night, after a rainstorm damaged sections of the facility.
The spokesman for the Federal Capital Territory command of the Nigerian Correctional Service, Samson Duza, said 119 inmates initially escaped but 14 of them were later recaptured by the security forces.
The FCT command of the NCoS is in charge of the Kuje and Suleja medium security custodial centres in Abuja and Niger State.
Speaking on the incident during a visit to the facility, the minister said, “The President has always talked about urbanisation eating into our correctional centres.
“You can look at the environment; it shows that we need to relocate a lot of our correctional centres and we need to relocate them away from city centres to create better space, security, and infrastructure.
“But as we have said, we are not here to make excuses. We are here to take responsibility. I want to assure you that we are talking to our sister agencies to make sure that we can synergize, collaborate, and ensure that there is a timely return of these escapees.
“This was a facility that was built to house 250 inmates. Before the incident, we had 499 inmates, which leads us to what we have been talking about -overcrowding in our correctional centres,” Tunji-Ojo explained.
