‘DSS alerted police, Uzodinma a week before Imo attacks’

Dennis Amachree, former assistant director of the Department of State Services (DSS), says the agency informed the police and Hope Uzodinma, governor of Imo, of an impending attack on the police command and prison facility a week before the incident.

On Monday, gunmen attacked the federal prison and police command headquarters in Owerri and freed over 1,844 inmates.

Again on Tuesday, gunmen attacked another police station located in Ehime Mbano LGA in the state.

Speaking when he featured on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, Amachree said there was “enough actionable intelligence” gathered by the DSS before Monday’s attacks but the police and the governor did not execute it.

The former assistant director said the police were informed about the attack one week and 72 hours before it happened, but that they were too lazy to prevent it.

“There is enough intelligence, enough actionable intelligence. Actionable in th3 sense that it allows for space for people to execute it. One week ahead of this particular event, of course, 72 hours before the event and then of course 48 hours before the event,” he said.

“Three times the Nigeria police was informed by the DSS that this is going to happen. Some suspects that are being relocated around the area were found surveiling the prisons and the police headquarters.

“But you know in our lackadaisical way when the intelligence will come they throw it by the side and then of course when something happens, everybody runs around.

“I listened to the governor’s speech. He is correct in the sense that there is an investigation still going on very sure he is very aware of some of the root causes and the people that are involved because I know that the security agencies are feeding him with reports as they go along.”

Amachree said the police are the “actioning party” that should have taken steps on the security intelligence, adding that Mohammed Adamu, former inspector-general of police, did not get his facts right before alleging that the masterminds of the attacks are members of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).