TheCable

Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, the minister of interior, says the collapsed walls of the Medium Security Custodial Centre in Suleja, Niger state, were old.

On Wednesday, 118 inmates escaped from the Suleja prison when the walls of the facility collapsed during a downpour.

Adamu Duza, spokesperson for the federal capital territory (FCT) command of the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS), said 10 of the fleeing inmates have been apprehended.

Speaking with journalists during a visit to the facility on Thursday, Tunji-Ojo said there is a need to prevent such an incident in any of the country’s prisons.

The minister said President Bola Tinubu has always been talking about how urbanisation is taking away the physical space meant for correctional facilities.

“We will do everything humanly possible to make sure that everyone is brought back,” he said.

“We must also look at the cost of the matter because we must make sure that this does not happen again.

“Obviously, we can see the walls are actually old. Unfortunately, there are certain responsibilities that we must deal with.

“The most important thing is to do everything possible to restore sanity, to ensure that this does not happen in any other facility.

“Also, the president has always been talking about urbanisation eating into our correctional centres.

“You can look at the environment. It shows that we will need to relocate a lot of our correctional centres.

“We need to be looking away from city centres to create better space and better infrastructure.

“But as we have said, we are not here to make excuses. We are here to take responsibility.

“We were elected as a government to do a job and that job we are prepared to do regardless of how difficult or how tough it is.”