At least one inmate has died and others were injured during a free-for-all that broke out at the Port Harcourt correctional centre.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the centre, Juliet Ofoni, confirmed the incident on Monday.
She said it happened at the old Port Harcourt township correctional centre.
She explained the death of an inmate in a clash with his colleague on Monday morning led to the riot.
She said the aggrieved friends of the deceased inmate staged a protest and attempted a reprisal but the situation was quickly brought under control by the authorities.
Ofoni, however, said some inmates capitalised on the situation and attempted a jailbreak by scaling the fence but were shot at by security operatives outside the Correctional Centre.
He said though most of them sustained bullet wounds, no life was lost in the attempt to stop the jailbreak.
She said: “The incident happened when the inmates were having some differences. So in the process, one of them died in the course of the fight, which led to the inmates protesting that their person had died.
“You know everybody has friends. So inside the yard, those that are friends with the one that died started protesting that why would the other people succeed in killing their person.
“So they wanted to start a reprisal on the other inmates thereby causing unrest inside the yard.
“The authority had to come in. That was when we started to use teargas to quell the situation but in the process, some of them seized the opportunity to scale the fence. So some of them tried to escape. We shot some outside the yard to bring them down.
“Some of them sustained bullet wounds but nobody died. As I speak to you they are in the hospital responding to treatment.
“At the moment, the situation is under control. Everywhere is calm. But they should not have gone to extent of contemplating jailbreak or fighting to a point of one of them losing his life.”
