An estimated 1,400 people are on death row in Nigeria. In several instances, governors are unwilling to sign the death warrants. But how long should a convict stay on death row? JOSEPH JIBUEZE examines the relevance of the death penalty.
THE prisons are filled with condemned criminals. They die many times before their death because they are uncertain of the time the hangman would come for them. But, in a country where torture is still used to extract confessions, and where the process of investigation is flawed, many on the death row may be innocent, leading to calls for abolition of the death penalty.
Perhaps, the uncertainties in the processes that lead to convictions explain why some governors are unwilling to sign death warrants. No fewer than 1,400 people are on death row, with many of them waiting for the hangman for years.
The only exception is the reported execution of three death row inmates at Oko Prisons in Benin City. Ogbomoro Omoregie, Apostle Igene and Mark Omosowhota, were said to have been executed on December 23 at about 6am. They had been sentenced to death by military tribunals under the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions) Decree 1971 as amended, in which there is no right of appeal.
Globally, the death penalty is being abolished. By 2008, 14 African countries had abolished the death penalty de jure (legally), while 10 others had abolished it de facto (in practice but not necessarily ordained by law). About half of the countries in Africa no longer execute prisoners convicted for capital offences.
Some countries have abolished the death penalty and others imposed a moratorium on executions and others retained it.
In West Africa, those who retained it are The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Conakry, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cameroun and Chad. Countries that have a moratorium on executions are Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Mauritania. Those that have abolished it are Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Senegal and Togo.
No fewer than 111 countries have abolished the death penalty de facto or de jure, with nearly all European countries among them.
The United Kingdom (UK) has no domestic legislation allowing the death penalty in any circumstance, and there is no provision in law for its re-introduction.
The death penalty is not universally prohibited, but the second optional protocol to the United Nations (UN) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on Prohibition of the use of the Death Penalty ask state parties to amend their laws to abolish death as sentence for crime.
According to a lawyer and National Coordinator of a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP), Mr Chino Obiagwu, not all states have ratified the protocol even though some have signed it.
LEDAP defends the rights of condemned prisoners.
Those who have signed it, he said, are not bound by it until ratified. Nigeria has not signed it.
Obiagwu said: “Every two years the UN General Assembly votes on resolution demanding countries that have not abolished the death penalty to impose moratorium on imposition and execution of death sentence.
“Nigeria usually abstains from voting for or against the resolution. This year’s vote, which took place early this month, Nigeria also abstained and neither voted against nor for the moratorium.
“In any event, Nigeria declared during the Universal Periodic Report that it had imposed a moratorium on use of the death penalty and the last execution before 2013 was in 1995 – the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists,” Obiagwu said.
In 2013, four prisoners on death row were executed in Edo, which the Amnesty International said was the first known execution in Nigeria since 2006.
Offences that attract the death penalty include murder (Section 319 of the Criminal Code), treason (section 37), treachery (section 49A), giving false evidence that leads to conviction (Section 159 of the Penal Code), robbery with firearms or offensive weapons (Section 1 of the Robbery and Firearms Act), adultery (Sharia Penal Codes), among others.
Endless wait
for the hangman
Even after exhausting their right of appeal, condemned persons are left indefinitely on death row. Those wielding executive powers refuse to sign death warrants, an indication that the government lacks the will power to enforce the penalty.
According to another NGO involved in fighting for the rights of prisoners the Prisoners’ Rights Advocacy Initiatives (PRAI), there are currently 7,364 inmates in Lagos prisons, for instance.
Relying on figures from prison authorities, PRAI said 5,991 of the inmates are awaiting trial. The convicts are 1,107; those on death row are 185 and those on life imprisonment are 81.
On April 13, Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Olufunmilayo Atilade, granted freedom to 153 awaiting trial inmates of the Kirikiri Maximum and Medium prisons.
On the occasion, Lagos State Controller of Prisons, Timothy Tinuoye, pleaded with Justice Atilade to prevail on relevant authorities to do something about 171 condemned prisoners awaiting execution in the Maximum Security Prison.
Recalling the condemnation that trailed the 2013 executions in Edo, Tinuoye said that most governors had since then refused to sign execution warrants.
To him, if the government was not ready to execute them, the authorities should move them out of Lagos in order to decongest the prisons.
As at February, the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, built with a capacity for 1,056, had 1,235 inmates, he said. While 772 of the inmates were awaiting trial, 83 were serving life sentence, 209 had been convicted; 171 were condemned prisoners.
A high profile death row inmate is the General Overseer of the Christian Praying Assembly, Ajao Estate in Lagos, Chukwuemeka Ezeugo (a.k.a Rev King). The Supreme Court, on February 26, affirmed his death sentence.
It followed his death sentence on January 11, 2007 by Justice Joseph Oyewole, formerly of the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja, for the murder of his church member Ann Uzor
King poured petrol on six devotees for an offence which he classified as “acts of fornication” and set them ablaze. Uzor, one of the victims, suffered severe burns and died on August 2, 2006, 11 days after the incident.
Dissatisfied with Justice Oyewole’s verdict, King appealed. But on February 1, 2013, the Court of Appeal, in a unanimous decision, held that the evidence was “overwhelming and damning” and proved beyond reasonable doubt that King committed the crime.
Ten months after the Supreme Court affirmed the verdict, King is yet to be executed.
Rather than sign death warrants, some governors have elected to commute death sentences to terms of imprisonment.
For instance, on December 27, Abia State Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, granted state pardon to 20 prisoners, three of whom were on death row. He commuted their sentences to life imprisonment.
Voices against abolition
On December 7, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights urged Nigeria to either execute about 1,000 Nigerians on death row or abolish death penalty.
Its Rapporteur for the Rights Situation in Nigeria Ms. Lucy Asuagbor, who led a delegation for the promotion of human and peoples’ rights to Nigeria, said: “It is better for the authorities to take courage and go straight to abolishing or take the decision that defines the real status of those on the death row either by commuting the sentences or causing them to be executed.
“Our stance is that if they cannot abolish, they must observe the moratorium by not pronouncing the death sentence or commuting the sentence of those on death row.”
During its 56th Ordinary Session in April, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted an additional draft Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, focused on the abolition of the death penalty in Africa, and handed it over to the African Union (AU).
Flawed justice
system justify calls
A flawed criminal justice system, in which innocent persons are convicted and sentenced to death, has led to calls for the abolition of death penalty.
For instance, Williams Owodo, was wrongfully incarcerated for over 17 years before he was freed on appeal. After his arrest, he was forced to sign a confessional statement on the basis of which he was convicted.
His case is an example of the ease by which innocent people can be sentenced to die within Nigeria’s criminal justice system.
There was also the case of Kingsley Akhabue, Fabian Matthew and Ismaila Fatoki, who ended up on death row after a street fight on March 26, 2008, in the Igando area of Lagos.
The police charged them with conspiracy and armed robbery, offences which attract death penalty under sections 403(a) and 402(a) of the Criminal Code Law Cap C17 Vol. 2, Laws of Lagos State 2003.
Justice Mojisola Dada of a Lagos State High Court in Igbosere, convicted and sentenced them to death by hanging. Their sentence was based on their confessional statements, which they claimed they were forced to make.
On appeal, the convicts, through LEDAP, argued that the police failed to specify what they stole from their victim. The appeal succeeded, and the trio were acquitted last December 11.
Justice Abimbola Obaseki-Adejumo of the Court of Appeal described the charge as “fundamentally flawed and/or incurably defective by omitting to state the thing that was robbed.”
The case of Obed Sopuruchi and Oto-Obong Edet, rescued from death row on July 4, 2014, also illustrate a flawed justice system.
Ten years earlier, they were arrested in a police raid as part of a search for some armed robbers in the Agbara area of Lagos State.
Sopuruchi, 16, when he was arrested, had visited his uncle in Lagos in 2004 after his SS2 third term promotion examinations. On October 6, 2004, he was arrested on his way to a cyber café.
He was taken to Morogbo Police Station where he was accused of armed robbery. He was tortured and shot in the leg. Scared to bits, he confessed to a crime he knew nothing about for fear of being killed.
Edet was also arrested in similar circumstances. A policeman shot him in the leg at the home of a traditional chief where he had gone to seek refuge as he sought to explain himself.
Sopuruchi and Edet said they were tortured to confess to a crime they knew nothing about. Based on the confessional statements, a Lagos State High Court in Igbosere on May 28, 2009, convicted and sentenced them to death.
Arguing their appeal, LEDAP questioned the existence of the purported victim, who was not brought before the court to testify.
In a judgment by Justice Yargata Nimpar, the Court of Appeal faulted the lower court’s decision. It held that the testimonies of two police officers, who testified were mere hearsay. Justices Sidi Bage and J.Y. Tukur concurred.
Nigeria is not alone. A man who spent nearly 30 years on Alabama’s death row walked free two days after prosecutors acknowledged that the only evidence they had against him could not prove he committed the crime. Ray Hinton was just 28 when he was arrested for two 1985 killings.
Prosecutors said new forensic tests did not show that crime scene bullets – the only evidence linking Hinton to the slayings – came from his gun. Sobbing tears of joy, his two sisters rushed to embrace him as he stepped outside the jail in Birmingham, Alabama.
Released on a Good Friday, he said he believed God led him to attorney Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative who waged a 16-year campaign that largely focused on the bullet evidence.
Case for abolition
Those pushing for death penalty abolition say it has not deterred crime. Despite the death penalty, capital crimes are on the increase, they argue.
The Annual Reports of the Nigeria Police show a consistent trend of increase in armed robbery between 2006 and 2009. There were 73,220 capital offences committed between 1994 and 2009 despite eight executions during the period.
Emeritus professor of law and criminology, Adedokun Adeyemi, believes that what is required in crime prevention and control is consistent and rigorous law enforcement, and not the ferocity of the punishment.
To him, murder/culpable homicide, for instance, is an offence which no punishment can deter because, according to him, “it is an act committed largely under stress of emotion or in consequence of mental illness.”
Adeyemi describes a typical armed robber as a youth who likely dropped out of school, with no parental support, or a marginalised migrant in the urban centre with no access to decent housing facilities or food.
“In a situation like this, our marginalised youth is faced with the certain prospects of imminent death by starvation if he refrains from committing offence.
“As between the uncertain remote threat of legal sanction of death penalty and the real imminent danger of death by starvation, we do not need to exercise any imagination about the possibility of his choice,” Adeyemi said.
To the criminologist, imprisonment of a maximum of 20 years should be considered rather than death penalty for capital offences.
He said: “Such punishment, backed with rigorous and consistent law enforcement, will certainly address the fear factor implicit in the insecurity posed to citizens by crime and criminals.
“In such circumstances, the very end so unsuccessfully sought to be served with the imposition of the death penalty shall certainly be successfully served with the suggested terms of imprisonment. Accordingly, the time for the abolition of the death penalty in Nigeria has now certainly arrived.”
A professor of law, C. O. Okonkwo (SAN), believes the journey to abolition should be a gradual, step-by-step process. To him, “a frontal attack will meet with obstacles.”
The UK, he said, introduced the death penalty for over 200 offences in 1808. But, between 1832 and 1834, death penalty was abolished for shoplifting, among others.
It was later restricted to murder of a police officer; capital punishment for murder was abolished in 1969.
Okonkwo said: “We should narrow the scope of the application of the death penalty. It should not apply to trial by ordeal which results in death. It should not apply to armed robbery which does not result in death. It should not apply to abetment of suicide.”
Former African Union Commission on Human and People’s Rights’ chairperson, Mr Dupe Atoki, believes there is the need to amend the constitution as a step towards death penalty abolishment.
Mrs. Atoki said: “It is apparent that in the conditions of the contemporary world, the legitimate purposes of punishment do not justify the imposition of the death penalty.
“In today’s world of expanded rights, advanced technology and greater respect for human rights and democracy, there appears to be no place for capital punishment – its abolition is much more honourable.”
According to her, the death sentence is an affront to human dignity and is inconsistent with the unqualified right to life, entrenched in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international and regional human rights instruments.
Death penalty, she said, cannot be corrected in case of error, even as it negates the essential content of the right to life and other rights that flow from it.
“Crime is rooted in the complex reality of contemporary society, including those social conditions of poverty and injustice which often provide the breeding grounds for serious crimes,” she argues.
The arguments of those who call for death penalty abolition can be summed up as follows: death penalty is inhumane and degrading treatment; it is based on primitive instinct of revenge; it does not serve as a deterrence since some crimes are circumstantial; executing a convicted murderer will not bring back the victim; and death penalty has not substantially reduced crime.
Push for retention
Those who argue in favour of retaining the death penalty argue that a convicted murderer executed for his crime would have reduced the number of would-be murderers on the streets: once executed, he will certainly not be in a position to kill again.
There is a sense of closure for families of victims who experience a sense of justice when a killer is executed.
It has also been argued that without the death penalty, hardened criminals would go from bad to worse since there is no limiting fear of death.
There is also the view that abolition of the death penalty would promote self-help.
A professor of law, Kharisu Chukkol, said: “The knowledge that a wanton murderer would get only a life sentence with the possibility of state pardon may compel an overzealous police officer or the victim of such an offence to seek revenge outside the law.”
The university don, who describes himself as a retentionist, faulted statistics that claim that the death penalty does not serve as a general deterrence. He said such statistics was not wholly accurate in so far as they do not address the other variables.
Besides, he said the debate as to whether the death penalty should be abolished should be widened to include all Nigerians of all strata, not just members of the elite who readily cite countless jurisdictions where the death penalty is no more in existence.
Chukkol said that should the death penalty be abolished through legislation, the autonomy enjoyed by states would further be eroded.
“In particular, that may lead to unnecessary controversy with the majority of the states in the North drawing the conclusion that that Shari’a is being killed through the back door, i.e., doing away with the Islamic punishments of murder (hiraba), adultery and its affiliates.
“It is my belief that Nigeria has presently countless challenges of underdevelopment to contend with and can ill-afford to be further drawn into avoidable acrimony and crises,” he said.
What do Nigerians think?
A 2012 study based on a nationwide survey shows that about 51 per cent of Nigerians oppose the use of death penalty as punishment for crime. Only 42 per cent supported its retention; seven per cent were unsure.
The study, conducted with the support of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office/British High Commission, found that nearly two-thirds of young people between 18-30 opposed the death penalty (58 per cent). However, 86 per cent of respondents believed the problems of crime and insecurity were “very serious”.
The debate as whether the death penalty should be abolished in Nigeria is one that will linger for a long time in a multi-religious country. With the rights of the condemned at stake, it is a debate that deserves a quicker resolution.
