10th July, 2022
By Ibironke Ariyo
The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) has refuted claims that detainees who fled the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Kuje, stole money from their fellow prisoners.
Mr Abubakar Umar, the Service Public Relations Officer (SPRO) confirmed this in a statement on Saturday in Abuja.
Some media houses had alleged that personnel at the Kuje Custodial Centre could not account for the sums of N82 million and $36,000 cash belonging to inmates.
However, Umar explained that its personnel did not keep such huge sums within custodial facilities.
He said that the clarification became imperative against the misleading narrative the unfounded information had generated and the diversion of attention from addressing the challenges at stake.
According to him, all Inmates’ cash deposited in the custody of the authorities of the custodial centre was intact and safe.
“There is an existing instruction from the Controller General, NCoS, Mr Haliru Nababa that all officers superintending custodial centres must not keep huge sums in the facility,” he said.
Umar reported Nababa as sparing no effort or resources in hunting down all the escapees.
He added that it was heart-warming that the integrated strategies were yielding favourable results.
Nababa expressed appreciation to security agencies and patriotic Nigerians whose collaboration was facilitating the recovery.
Meanwhile, he assured the public of his irrevocable commitment to bringing back all escapees to answer for their crimes.
The NCoS boss appealed to citizens to assist in achieving the task by visiting the NCoS website for the pictures of the escapees and alerting the nearest security agency on suspicion or seeing any of them.
NAN