By Emeka Ibemere
Last week, Nigerians woke up with the odd news of the execution of four Nigerians who were executed in Indonesia for drug related offences.
The Nigerians, Martins Anderson, 50, was charged with possession of heroin, and Okwudili Oyatanze, 41, also charged for smuggling heroin; Jamiu Abashin, 50, was executed for smuggling heroin; while Sylvester Nwaolisa, 42, was executed for the same offence.
They were executed by firing squad despite pleas by the Nigerian government, UN and Amnesty International for the death sentence to be cancelled. The four Nigerians were sentenced between 1999 and 2004 for different drug-related offences.
Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for the most serious crimes known as capital crimes.
The death penalty when meted out according to law is quite different from murder, which is committed by individuals for personal ends. Nevertheless, human life has supreme value.
Regimes that make prolific use of capital punishment, especially for political or religious offenses, violate the most important human right—the right to life. Yet, these practices are still in vogue in some countries.
Experts say, the death penalty was historically misused, meted out for minor crimes, and to suppress political dissent and religious minorities. Such misuse of the death penalty greatly declined in the nineteenth and twentieth century’s, and today it has been abolished in many countries, particularly in Europe and Latin America.
In most countries where it is retained, it is reserved as a punishment for only the most serious crimes: premeditated murder, espionage, treason, and in some countries, drug trafficking. Among some countries, however, use of the death penalty is still common.
Capital punishment remains a contentious issue, even where its use is limited to punishment of only the most serious crimes. Security experts have argued that it deters crime, prevents criminals repeating an undesirable crime, and that is an appropriate punishment for the crime of murder.
But human rights activists argue that it does not deter criminals more than would life imprisonment. According to them, it violates human rights, and runs the risk of executing some who are wrongfully convicted, particularly minorities and the poor.
“Punishment that allows criminals to reflect and reform themselves is arguably more appropriate than execution”, Oyemisi Aduwo, a human right activist said. But why is Nigerian not practicing the judicial system.
Nigerians are of the opinion that in the ideal society, human beings should be able to recognize, based on their own conscience, that crimes deemed serious enough to merit the death penalty or life imprisonment constitute undesirable, unacceptable behaviour.
According to some Nigerians, the emergence of modern democracies which has brought with it the concepts of natural rights and equal justice for all citizens, doesn’t allow the execution of convicts for major or minor offences.
But Giwa-Amu Igbono, a lawyer and a senior partner, Stephen and Solomon Foundation, a prison ministry of the Knights of St. Mulumba, Lekki Sub-Council in a recent interview with our correspondent on those condemned to death in Nigeria but are yet to be executed, said; modern politics is the overriding factor.
“Everybody is shifting away from death penalty to life sentences as the maximum punishment for any of offence. I think the government of the day is tilting towards that direction”, Amu stated. But why is Nigerian government not practicing death sentence.
“Let’s talk about the present political atmosphere; no governor has had the courage to sign a death warrant for these people to be executed’, he added.
“Also, some of these cases are on appeal. You cannot go and hang a man whose case is still in the Court of Appeal. Even if the appeal is frivolous, vexatious and empty of substance, you will allow the highest court of the land to give its final judgment”.
“So, there are some cases that are on appeal and there are even cases that have gone to the Supreme Court, where it has been confirmed that the person should die by hanging. But the present political era has not given any governor the courage to sign the death warrant.”
According to him, apart from it being political, the wind of change internationally now doesn’t look at punishment by death as a way out of the most grievous offences committed.
He however opined that in spite of that, the politicians’ decision not to sign the death warrant is leading to the congestion of prisons. “It is not these people that cause the congestion of prisons, but those on awaiting trials because they are more in number,” he quipped.
Amnesty International, while working on the prison system, exposed the gory state of Nigeria's prison system, saying that Nigeria's prisons are filled with people whose human rights are being systematically violated. According to Amnesty International in February 2008, the criminal justice system is utterly failing the Nigerian people, adding that it is a mere "conveyor belt of injustice from beginning to end."
A 2008 report notes that five out of 11 female death row inmates were held in Kiri-Kiri Women’s Prison while the other six were “held in the female wings of six other prisons,” such as Katsina Central Prison.
The 2008 report also stated that in Nigeria, prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners on death row vary somewhat from one facility to another but conditions are harsh and life-threatening throughout the country. The reports said most prisons in Nigeria were built prior to 1960 and are in such a state of decay that during a recent prison escape the walls of the prison simply gave way.
Amnesty International report equally said the prisons are grossly overcrowded, with some prisons holding more than 800 percent of their designed capacity. Lack of potable water and inadequate sewage facilities result in dangerous and unsanitary conditions.
It was gathered that death row prisoners are segregated from the general population in cell blocks built to hold six inmates but which can hold up to 18-24 people.
Death row conditions vary from prison to prison. In some prisons, death row inmates are restricted to their cells throughout most of the day, but in others prisoners are allowed outside their cells during the day.
Death-sentenced prisoners do not know when they will be executed. There is a report that upon arrival of the hangman at the prison, guards give progressively more precise hints until prisoners are able to determine who would be hanged. Another inmate was reported to have told the group that, in his prison, inmates did not know who would be executed; only after 2 p.m. does a prisoner know that he would not be executed that day. Prisoners who have exhausted the appeals process are often held in a section of the jail where they can see executions taking place. After an execution, other death row inmates are asked to clean the gallows. Condemned prisoners spend an average of 20 years under these conditions, developing serious mental illnesses for which they receive no treatment.
Amnesty International also reported that one organization is “trying to compel judges to remove mentally ill prisoners from the general population”. Furthermore, individuals accused of death-eligible crimes are forced to wait long periods of time before trial. Among the over 1,000 people who were under sentence of death in Nigeria at the end of 2012, most have waited between five and 10 years to be tried.
Nigeria was once ruled by several military governments under which the country practiced death sentence as for even common offenses by special tribunals and in the process denied many individuals the right to appeal. Access to clemency which still affects those convicted during that period has, in recent years, been limited to for political considerations and status of financial means.
Amnesty International reported that, by 2008, more than half of individuals on death row in Nigeria had been convicted on the basis of a confessional statement, with courts often failing to enforce the legal prohibition against the admissibility of coerced confessions and individuals have been held for years before being brought to trial while Appeals keep pending for over a decade.
However, human rights groups in Nigeria have tried to use the courts to establish systemic reforms in the judicial system and they have recorded success. Human rights defenders in Nigeria have been recognized as effective and resilient. Notably, the Human Rights Protection Unit and the Office of the Public Defender have had a noticeable impact in Lagos State, according to a 2006 report by Hina Jilani, the U.N. Special Representative of human rights defenders.
In Nigeria if one is waiting for the governors to sign the capital punishment law, you may wait for longer time to come. Reasons are that they are politicians and they need your votes.
It would be recalled that the outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan, once called on governors to be alive to their constitutional responsibility of signing death warrants for the enforcement of capital punishment.
The president was speaking against the backdrop of lack of discipline in the society.
“These days, because of modern life, discipline is almost gone. Discipline can be in various forms. In the states, it could be admonition. Magistrate can just admonish and allow him (a suspect) to go. From admonition to various forms of punishment, it could be imprisonment. The extreme is capital punishment. If it is in the case of capital punishment, the state governors will sign. Even governors sometimes find it difficult to sign”, he stated.
“I have been telling the governors that they must sign because that is the law. The works we are doing have a very sweet part and a very ugly part and we must perform both. No matter how painful it is, it is part of their responsibilities”. But would they sign even when Amnesty International said there are 762 death row inmates across Nigerian prisons. Death-row inmates are held in Enugu Prison, Lagos Kiri-Kiri Prison, Oko Prison, Port Harcourt prison, Benin City Prison and Kaduna prison in Nigeria. Just recently, Nigerian military sentence its 54 Nigerian soldiers to death for refusing to fight Boko Haram. Since then,
The court marshal soldiers have been moved from Abuja to a holding cell in Lagos and are held under conditions of military. According to reports, they are awaiting confirmation of their death sentences by the military council, and thereafter, an appeal that may bring them freedom or the death.
It was gathered that the convicted soldiers were involved in the fight against the Boko Haram terrorists in North East Nigeria and were attached to 7th Division of the Nigerian Army in Maiduguri, Borno State.
A military court sitting in Abuja condemned them to death on December 17 after finding the soldiers guilty of mutiny against the authorities.
The prosecutor, J.E. Nwosu, an army Captain, said the accused soldiers had on August 4, in Maiduguri, refused to join the 111 Special Forces Battalion troops, commanded by Timothy Opurum, a Lieutenant Colonel, for an operation against terrorist group, Boko Haram.
Mr. Nwosu said the operation was meant to recapture Delwa, Bulabulin and Damboa in Borno State from the terrorists. But all the accused soldiers pleaded not guilty to the charges, and argued that they were prepared to fight but had insufficient equipment. The soldiers are the second batch of Nigerian troops condemned to death by military courts for mutiny.
Femi Falana, who is the attorney for the convicted soldiers, described the sentence as “genocide.”
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