By Alté Jay, YeyeNews.com, October 26, 2021
Just days after unknown gunmen attacked the Abolongo correctional center in Oyo, killed two security agents, and freed most of the awaiting trial inmates, two inmates have surprisingly returned to the facility. In a statement released on Monday, October 25, the head of the facility said the two returned because they had been starving since they escaped.
YeyeNews.com reporters managed to speak with the returning inmates. They revealed that after escaping from the facility they had to live in the streets, and were very surprised at how things were now alarmingly expensive in Nigeria. One of the prisoners who was convicted in 2014, before the start of President Buhari’s regime, explained that he was shocked that 200 naira could no longer buy a plate of food anymore.
“I had managed to pick 200 naira on the ground the next day after I escaped,” the prisoner narrated. “I took this money to all the roadside restaurants in the neighborhood and none of them sold a plate of food for 200 naira. I was very shocked. I had to settle for garri and groundnuts, and I slept with an empty stomach that night. I couldn’t cope anymore the next day, that is why I came back. I would rather spend my life here, eating watery beans everyday than die of starvation in the streets.”
The head of the facility who spoke with YeyeNews.com reporter said that the operatives of Oyo State Command of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) might not have to continued with their quest to recapture all the prisoners who escaped as he now believes all of the prisoners would eventually return because of the high cost of food all over the country.
“It would be very difficult for the prisoners to survive out there because food is very expensive now,” he said. “If I were in their shoes, believe me, I would come back here and manage the food being served here, rather than die of hunger out there.”
