Posted by Soni Daniel, Port Harcourt on
Authorities of the Port Harcourt Prison and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria Plc have disagreed on the possible cause of last Friday's jailbreak in Port Harcourt, during which 176 inmates escaped.
Authorities of the Port Harcourt Prison and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria Plc have disagreed on the possible cause of last Friday's jailbreak in Port Harcourt, during which 176 inmates escaped.
In its first ever reaction to the incident on Tuesday, the prison said that the prolonged outage by the PHCN enabled hoodlums from a nearby creek to storm the jail and set the detainees free.
The Public Relations Officer of the prison, Dr. Gladday Jaja, in a signed statement, regretted that, with the absence of a stand-by generator, there was nothing they could do to avert the incident.
But, in a swift response, the Public Relations Manager of the Port Harcourt zone of the PHCN, Mr. Emmanuel Anene, questioned the belated attempt by the Port Harcourt Prison to drag the company into its problems.
Anene stated that there was no evidence to show that power failed at the prison on the said date and time as claimed by the prison spokesman.
The PHCN image-maker faulted the claim, saying that it was clear that the prison authorities were looking for something to hold on to for their failure.
'Why did it take them almost a week to come up with the story that PHCN took light at the time?" Anene asked, adding, 'We should stop looking for scapegoats for our own failures if we must move forward."
The claims and counter- claims are coming in the wake of speculations that the prison comptroller and five of his top officials had been arrested and detained in connection with the jailbreak.
A police source said the questioning of some persons in the prison was ordered from Abuja as soon as the incident occurred on Friday.
But Jaja denied the rumoured arrest of the comptroller of the prison and five others, admitting that only an official of the prison was questioned by the Rivers State Police Command and released on the same day.
Meanwhile, the Port Harcourt Prison on Thursday began the revaluation of items destroyed during the jailbreak.
No fewer than 1,000 medium-sized mattresses were delivered to the prison on Thursday morning to replace the ones burnt last Friday.
Many key officers were also brought in from the prisons around the state to assist in stocktaking so as to facilitate the rehabilitation of the jail, which was built in 1918 with a capacity for 800 inmates.
By the time the cultists invaded the place on Friday, it had a total of 2013 inmates.
The Punch, Friday, June 24, 2005