By Chijioke Agwu, Abakaliki
Police in Ebonyi State on Thursday morning, August 18, 2018, foiled an attempted jailbreak following riots that erupted in Abakaliki Prison between inmates and prisons officers. As at press time, Police have cordoned off all roads leading to the Abakaliki prisons.
Gunshots could be heard intermittently as Police try to recover a firearm allegedlly taken from one of the prison officers by the rioting inmates.
It was gathered that the inmates were protesting poor treatment especially inadequate feeding.
Unconfirmed reports said that about five inmates were killed with two prisons officers sustaining various degrees of injury in the incident.
Another source said that some of the inmates capitalised on the riot to stage a jailbreak and had already succeeded in creating an opening on the wall before anti-riot policemen arrived and heavily tear-gassed them into submission.
The prison is located beside the Police headquarters leading to prompt intervention from the police.
Already, the Commander of Military Cantonment and the Commissioner of Police have visited the area and are directing the operations to restore sanity to the prison.
The Police spokesman, DSP George Okafor, when contacted said that the command was still working hard to resolve the crisis.
He, however, refused to confirm if anybody was dead or not. “There was an attempted jailbreak and the prisons called in the police. We cordoned off the area and restored normalcy to the area.
“We will brief you later on the issue once everything is sorted out”.
