YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) – More than 1,800 inmates are on the run in southeastern Nigeria after escaping when heavily armed gunmen attacked their prison with explosives and missile grenades, authorities said.
Nigerian police said it believed a banned separatist group, the indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB), was behind the attack in the city of Owerri, but a spokesman for the group denied involvement.
The secessionist movement in the Southeast is one of many serious security challenges facing President Muhammadu Buhari, including a decade-long Islamic uprising in the Northeast, a wave of school kidnappings in the Northwest and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
Buhari said the attack, in a town near the oil-rich Niger Delta that is the mainstay of Africa’s largest crude oil exporter and economy, was an “act of terrorism.” He ordered security forces to arrest the fleeing prisoners.
The attackers stormed the facility around 2:15 a.m. (0115 GMT) on Monday, the Nigerian Correctional Service said.
“The Owerri Custodial Center in Imo State has been attacked by unknown gunmen and forcibly released a total of 1,844 prisoners,” the spokesman said in a statement late Monday.
Police said attackers used explosives to blow up the prison’s administrative block and entered the prison courtyard.
“Preliminary investigation has revealed that the attackers … are members of the banned indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB),” said Frank Mba, a spokesman for the police of Nigeria.
IPOB wants independence for a region in southeastern Nigeria it calls Biafra. One million people died in a 1967-70 civil war between the Nigerian government and secessionists there.
Security in the region has deteriorated in recent months. Since January, several police stations have been attacked, with massive amounts of ammunition stolen and reports from the IPOB’s paramilitary wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), colliding with the military.
But an IPOB spokesperson told Reuters the group had not carried out the prison raid.
“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, ”the IPOB spokesman said in a telephone conversation.
Reporting by Tife Owolabi in Yenagoa and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu in Onitsha; Additional reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Written by Tom Hogue and Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky