ABUJA: More than 1,800 inmates escaped after a heavily armed gang attacked a prison in southern Nigeria using explosives, correctional authorities said on Monday, in one of the west African country’s largest jailbreaks.

The attackers blasted their way into the Owerri prison in Imo state, engaging guards in a gun battle and breaking out inmates, the national corrections authority said in a statement.

The assailants arrived in pickup trucks and buses before storming the facility. No group claimed responsiblity for the assault, though President Muhammadu Buhari called the attack an “act of terrorism” carried out by

“anarchists” and urged security forces to capture the assailants and the escaped detainees.

Prisons in Africa’s most populous country are often overcrowded, and as many as 70 percent of inmates are on remand and can be held awaiting trial for years.

The governor of neighbouring Abia state imposed a night curfew on two towns there, a statement said, to protect local residents without direct reference to the prison attack.

Imo state is part of a region that has long been a hotbed for Nigerian separatist groups and where tensions between federal authorities and the indigenous Igbo population are often high.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) separatist movement has recently been posting videos on social media of dozens of its militiamen in training.

Authorities imposed a curfew on parts of Imo state earlier this year after clashes between the army and the local militia.

Calls for a separate state of Biafra in the south are a sensitive subject in Nigeria, after a unilateral declaration of independence from British rule in 1967 sparked a brutal 30-month civil war.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2021