The Nigerian Correctional Service says it has set up a special security team to guard prisons nationwide.
Prisons across the country have, since October 2020, witnessed six violent attacks and jailbreaks.
This is contained in a statement issued and signed by the NCoS spokesman Francis Enobore on Sunday in Abuja.
The controller-general of NCoS, Haliru Nababa, disclosed this after a meeting with the commandant-general of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Abubakar Audi and the acting comptroller-general of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Idris Jere.
Mr Nababa said the meeting was on strengthening intelligence gathering and sharing of same among security operatives to nip attacks in the bud.
He recalled that interior minister Rauf Aregbesola had, on December 9, during the ministerial retreat held in Ilorin, Kwara, directed security agencies under the ministry to work together on intelligence gathering, sharing and physical confrontation with jail attackers.
He also said the task force was expected to combine with the officers and men of the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Nigeria Police Force that were already deployed to support corrections armed squad in guarding custodial centres.
Mr Audi lauded the initiative and promised to task all commandants to buckle down. He noted that the strengthening of security would include protecting custodial centres designated as critical national infrastructure, being the last agency in the actualisation of criminal justice dispensation in Nigeria.
Mr Jere noted that the NIS was poised to activate the data of escapees in all the entry and exit points that were manned by his personnel in other to strengthen the recapture process already initiated.
In a related development, Mr Nababa has asked the director-general of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Aliyu Abubakar, to finalise the process of red-flagging fleeing inmates.
Mr Nababa also mentioned that it would be through the harmonisation and sharing of inmates’ data already captured by NIMC in online transactions.