Kuje prison attack may be ‘trade by barter’ – APC lawmaker

A member of the House Representatives (APC Gombe), Abubakar Yunus, has alleged that the Kuje Prison attack and the recent release of another batch of the victims of train attack may be ‘trade by barter’.

Abubakar Yunus was speaking during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Tuesday.

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Earlier Tuesday, terrorists released five more victims of the Kaduna train attack.

The terrorists had abducted a number of passengers when they attacked a Kaduna-bound train on March 28, 2022.

However, on July 5, 2022, terrorists invaded Kuje Prison and freed over 800 suspects, including all the Boko Haram members in detention.

When asked on whether there is a correlation between the recent release of some of the passengers and the Kuje prison attack, he said, “As a legislator for so many years and I have been overseeing the defence mechanism, I will not say that the mechanism, the security architecture, is not actually in place. I will rather say it’s part of the tactical schematic programmmed way the government wants to use it.”

He added, “Why I say that? Prior to the Kuje prison attack, was Kuje prison ever attacked? Was it the first time they had put insurgents, Boko Haram there? Why? So all those response teams were there. I want to allude to the fact that earlier on, the government argued that they had the capacity to bombard these insurgents to free the captives, but they were afraid of collateral damage.

“To us, when the bandits or the insurgents are claiming the release of our captives; and probably I will allude to the school of thought, the hypothesis, maybe it is a trade by barter. So it was a deliberate non-intervention of the government.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to replace the picture erroneously used to depict the lawmaker. The error is regretted.