IENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) – More than 1,800 prisoners are fleeing in southeastern Nigeria after fleeing when gunmen attacked his prison using explosives and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said.
Nigerian police said they believed that a banned separatist group, the Biafra Indigenous People (IPOB), was behind the attack in the city of Owerri, but a spokesman for the group denied involvement.
The separatist movement in the southeast is one of several serious security challenges facing President Muhammadu Buhari, including a decade-old Islamic insurgency in the northeast, a wave of kidnappings in schools in the northwest and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
Buhari said the attack, in a city near the oil-rich region of the Niger Delta, which is Africa’s main oil exporter and largest economy, was an “act of terrorism”. He ordered security forces to arrest escaped prisoners.
The attackers broke into the premises at about 2:15 am (0115 GMT) on Monday, according to Nigeria’s Correctional Service.
“The Owerri Custody Center in Imo state was attacked by unknown gunmen and forcibly released a total of 1,844 prisoners in custody,” his spokesman said in a statement late Monday.
Police said the attackers used explosives to blow up the prison’s administrative block and entered the prison courtyard.
“Preliminary investigations revealed that the attackers … are members of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB),” said Frank Mba, a spokesman for the Nigeria Police Force.
IPOB wants independence for a region in southeastern Nigeria that it calls Biafra. One million people died in the 1967-70 civil war between the Nigerian government and local separatists.
In recent months, security in the region has deteriorated. Several police stations have been attacked since January, with large quantities of stolen ammunition and reports from the IPOB paramilitary wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), in confrontation with the military.
But an IPOB spokesman told Reuters that the group had not carried out the operation in prison.
“IPOB and ESN were not involved in the attack in Owerri, Imo state. It is not our mandate to attack security personnel or prison facilities, ”said the IPOB spokesman by phone.
Reporting by Tife Owolabi in Yenagoa and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu in Onitsha; Additional reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Writing by Tom Hogue and Alexis Akwagyiram; Raissa Kasolowsky’s Edition