FG, States And Condemned Criminals

The National Assembly recently directed that all the condemned prisoners numbering about 870 still languishing in Nigerian prisons should be executed without much delay. That position on a touchy global issue borders principally on the need to obey laws of the land and the fact that the affected death row inmates have remained in solitary confinement for between five and 25 years, still feeding on tax payers’ sacrifices.

Instructively, all affected 870 prisoners had been duly sentenced by courts of competent jurisdiction for crimes ranging from murder and armed robbery, among others.

Strangely, in a bid to counter the National Assembly’s directive on the execution of condemned criminals, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights has asked the Federal Government to halt the proposed action, on ground not based on law.

The action stemmed from a correspondence to the commissioner, Human and Peoples’ Rights Working Group on Death Penalty by a coalition of human and civil rights groups, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP). Dated June 23, 2010, the said protest was filed on behalf of SERAP with the commission’s chairperson, Reine Alapini-Gauson, by an activist lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana.

The human rights group had in the said correspondence alleged that the government’s only justification for the planned execution of the condemned prisoners was to address prisons, congestion. As untrue as the allegation is, the commission, an agency of the African Union (AU) has pleaded with President Goodluck Jonathan, to put on hold the plan to execute the condemned prisoners pending, the determination of the group’s correspondence.

Not done with the issue, SERAP’s Executive Director, in a statement, fortnight ago, said the group had also asked the Federal Government to maintain moratorium on execution of the death penalty and move towards abolition.

This is most unfortunate. Should Nigeria be governed by laws or sentiments? Should any group insist on ignoring an aspect of the constitution, it detests, at will? Or should human rights cover only the living and not those whose lives were forcefully terminated by others?

Strangely, the country’s constitution allows for capital punishment as reward for certain heinous crimes including murder and armed robbery among others. It is different from other offences that usually attract minor prison sentences, often given in hope of attitudinal change. Therefore, the planned execution of about 870 condemned criminals found guilty of such heinous crimes should go on, in accordance with the laws of the land.

We are aware that in most cases, the Federal and State governments have delayed the execution of such condemned prisoners due to either inability, reluctance or lack of the required political and moral will to sign the death warrants of those who took the lives of others.

Laws are to be obeyed. None has the right to pick and choose which to obey. If Rights Groups think capital sentence for capital offences should be abolished, they should have sponsored a proposal to amend aspects of the Nigerian Constitution that allows death penalty for crimes like murder. Without that, the halt of execution is indeed taking human rights too far.

For the avoidance of doubt, every free state identifies her peculiar problems and fashion solutions for them. The choice of capital punishment as penalty for murder and armed robbery is Nigeria’s constitutional choice to solve a burning social malady, and the belated debate over whether it is right or wrong, clearly academic. What is paramount is the need to abide by the constitution of the land.

That being the case, if a criminal is condemned to death, and goes the whole legal chain of justice from the magistrate courts to the appellate level but still fails to upturn a valid judgment, then he remains condemned and should face the full weight of the law as the consequences of his actions. 

This is indeed why The Tide insists that there should be no pardon for those who willfully take the lives of another citizen or others but will battle to keep theirs, in the name of human rights, or was it not said that he who kills by the sword shall die by it?  And that way, serves as deterrent to other criminals that may take the same action?

We agree with the National Economic Council meeting chaired by the nation’s vice president and attended by 36 state governors on the July 15, this year where it decided that state governors should urgently sign death warrants for death row prisoners for the reasons thus far advanced and as a secondary check, to help in decongesting the country’s prisons.