The plight of Nigeria’s living dead
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Elisabeth Janaina
Feb 22, 2017, 11:54:06 AM2/22/17
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The plight of Nigeria’s living dead
Posted on February 16, 2017 by Tosin Osasona
Hundreds of Nigerians are enduring daily torture on death row as they
await execution for crimes ranging from kidnapping to blasphemy.
According to an Amnesty International report, Nigeria had 1,673 people
on death row in 2015. Credit: Adam Jones.
Nigeria has no qualms about sentencing thousands of its citizens to
death. A 1998 Supreme Court decision ruled that “the sentence of death
in itself cannot be degrading and inhuman”, and in recent years, the
number of crimes punishable by death in Nigeria has been growing.
For example, in 2013, the Nigerian Senate approved the death penalty
for acts of terrorism. In 2014, 54 soldiers were awarded death
sentences for mutiny. In 2015, the Upper Sharia Court of Kano
sentenced nine people to death for blasphemy. And in 2016, Lagos
became the latest of several Nigeria states to make kidnapping a
capital offence. It is little surprise then that in 2014, Nigeria led
the entire world in death sentences as 659 people were condemned.
However, despite these high numbers, Nigeria has reportedly executed
just seven people in the past decade.
It could be that state authorities are reluctant to authorise
executions – only two governors have signed execution warrants since
the return to democracy in 1999 – or it could be that even a nation
with a population of 180 million cannot recruit enough hangmen to
operate its gallows. But regardless of the reasons, the result is that
hardly any prisoners sentenced to death have actually been executed.
The president and state governors do sometimes grant pardons or
commute death sentences, but there is no evidence of any policy
framework regulating this. What happens in practice then is that
office holders occasionally make pronouncements commuting sentences,
usually as a token of goodwill, but even supposedly reprieved
prisoners continue to languish on death row for years, along with
their unpardoned cellmates.
Deplorable conditions
Not to mention the deep controversies around the justness and
effectiveness of condemning citizens to death in the first place, the
standards of trial processes leading to these sentences in Nigerian
courts are often highly questionable. The use of torture for
interrogation by Nigerian police is well-documented, yet this tainted
evidence forms the basis of many convictions. A criminal justice
system in which 80% of inmates claim having been beaten, threatened or
tortured in police custody is not one that can be trusted with
upholding a fair trial.
But even after contentious death sentences may be passed down,
detainees often face further miscarriages of justice as they are kept
in deplorable conditions for years.
The opaque and broken state of Nigeria’s criminal justice system makes
it difficult to know exactly how many prisoners there are on death
row, but a 2015 Amnesty International report puts the number at 1,673.
These inmates are incarcerated without an end in sight in prisons that
are notorious for overcrowding, human rights violations,
infrastructural decay, torture, poor funding, improper management and
poorly-trained officials.
According to a presidential commission investigation, inmates spend an
average of 10-15 years on death row. And during this time, they live
under the weight of uncertainty in appalling environments, with many
suffering from mental illnesses.
Right to dignity
Debates on the effectiveness and morality of capital punishment will
no doubt rage on, but even its most unyielding proponents agree that
the sentence is not for torture and then death. Moreover, while a
citizen may forfeit some of their freedoms by committing a crime, they
retain many of their human rights as protected under the constitution.
These rights are not benefits or privileges, but are conferred simply
by being a member of the human race.
Yet in contravention of this legal and ethical reality, much of the
process that an individual may go through – from the legitimacy of the
trial, to the conditions on death row, to the method of execution (if
this ever occurs), to the treatment of the body – all fail to protect
the dignity of the human person.
A system that relies on questionable evidence; that keeps condemned
persons in daily apprehension of death for 15 years; that houses them
in unventilated concrete cubicles; that routinely starves them; and
that makes them clean the gallows is unjustifiably cruel and
undignifying.
Nigeria’s death row crisis mirrors the defects in the criminal justice
system, and resolving it would require the collaborative effort of all
tiers of governments. But sadly, political elites have long benefited
from these same systemic weaknesses, which those in authority are able
to exploit in order to delay, frustrate or influence unwelcome trials
and to strengthen their own hold on power.
These structural failings, and lack of political will to correct them,
means that many Nigerians are at risk of being denied their
constitutional rights and their inalienable human right to dignity –
not least the forgotten hundreds of living dead undergoing
psychological if not physical torture day by day as they await a
sentence that may have been passed down unjustly and may dangle over
their heads indefinitely.
Tosin Osasona is a Research Associate and Criminal Justice Expert at
the Centre for Public Policy Alternatives, Lagos, Nigeria.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or
subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your
feed reader.
This entry was posted in African Politics Now, The Nigeria Forum.
Bookmark the permalink.
3 thoughts on “The plight of Nigeria’s living dead”
Justice says:
February 16, 2017 at 5:45 pm
The integrity of a country, is mirrored in their prison system!!
Lanre Oyewole says:
February 17, 2017 at 12:01 pm
Where has the author cooked up these “facts”! For one thing
Nigeria has no blasphemy laws, since we operate a derivative of
English law, and Sharia is limited in application.
Secondly, none of the soldiers condemned to death by the Jonathan
era is still facing risk of death as their sentence has been commuted,
and is still under review.
It helps that authors and publishers exercise restraint and
diligence before going to print with half-truths and sensational
headlines.
tony says:
February 17, 2017 at 12:14 pm
Err, Lanre, you just said yourself that Sharia has (limited)
application in Nigeria. And the author talks about how many death
sentences get commuted. Where exactly is your problem…?
Posted on February 16, 2017 by Tosin Osasona
Hundreds of Nigerians are enduring daily torture on death row as they
await execution for crimes ranging from kidnapping to blasphemy.
According to an Amnesty International report, Nigeria had 1,673 people
on death row in 2015. Credit: Adam Jones.
Nigeria has no qualms about sentencing thousands of its citizens to
death. A 1998 Supreme Court decision ruled that “the sentence of death
in itself cannot be degrading and inhuman”, and in recent years, the
number of crimes punishable by death in Nigeria has been growing.
For example, in 2013, the Nigerian Senate approved the death penalty
for acts of terrorism. In 2014, 54 soldiers were awarded death
sentences for mutiny. In 2015, the Upper Sharia Court of Kano
sentenced nine people to death for blasphemy. And in 2016, Lagos
became the latest of several Nigeria states to make kidnapping a
capital offence. It is little surprise then that in 2014, Nigeria led
the entire world in death sentences as 659 people were condemned.
However, despite these high numbers, Nigeria has reportedly executed
just seven people in the past decade.
It could be that state authorities are reluctant to authorise
executions – only two governors have signed execution warrants since
the return to democracy in 1999 – or it could be that even a nation
with a population of 180 million cannot recruit enough hangmen to
operate its gallows. But regardless of the reasons, the result is that
hardly any prisoners sentenced to death have actually been executed.
The president and state governors do sometimes grant pardons or
commute death sentences, but there is no evidence of any policy
framework regulating this. What happens in practice then is that
office holders occasionally make pronouncements commuting sentences,
usually as a token of goodwill, but even supposedly reprieved
prisoners continue to languish on death row for years, along with
their unpardoned cellmates.
Deplorable conditions
Not to mention the deep controversies around the justness and
effectiveness of condemning citizens to death in the first place, the
standards of trial processes leading to these sentences in Nigerian
courts are often highly questionable. The use of torture for
interrogation by Nigerian police is well-documented, yet this tainted
evidence forms the basis of many convictions. A criminal justice
system in which 80% of inmates claim having been beaten, threatened or
tortured in police custody is not one that can be trusted with
upholding a fair trial.
But even after contentious death sentences may be passed down,
detainees often face further miscarriages of justice as they are kept
in deplorable conditions for years.
The opaque and broken state of Nigeria’s criminal justice system makes
it difficult to know exactly how many prisoners there are on death
row, but a 2015 Amnesty International report puts the number at 1,673.
These inmates are incarcerated without an end in sight in prisons that
are notorious for overcrowding, human rights violations,
infrastructural decay, torture, poor funding, improper management and
poorly-trained officials.
According to a presidential commission investigation, inmates spend an
average of 10-15 years on death row. And during this time, they live
under the weight of uncertainty in appalling environments, with many
suffering from mental illnesses.
Right to dignity
Debates on the effectiveness and morality of capital punishment will
no doubt rage on, but even its most unyielding proponents agree that
the sentence is not for torture and then death. Moreover, while a
citizen may forfeit some of their freedoms by committing a crime, they
retain many of their human rights as protected under the constitution.
These rights are not benefits or privileges, but are conferred simply
by being a member of the human race.
Yet in contravention of this legal and ethical reality, much of the
process that an individual may go through – from the legitimacy of the
trial, to the conditions on death row, to the method of execution (if
this ever occurs), to the treatment of the body – all fail to protect
the dignity of the human person.
A system that relies on questionable evidence; that keeps condemned
persons in daily apprehension of death for 15 years; that houses them
in unventilated concrete cubicles; that routinely starves them; and
that makes them clean the gallows is unjustifiably cruel and
undignifying.
Nigeria’s death row crisis mirrors the defects in the criminal justice
system, and resolving it would require the collaborative effort of all
tiers of governments. But sadly, political elites have long benefited
from these same systemic weaknesses, which those in authority are able
to exploit in order to delay, frustrate or influence unwelcome trials
and to strengthen their own hold on power.
These structural failings, and lack of political will to correct them,
means that many Nigerians are at risk of being denied their
constitutional rights and their inalienable human right to dignity –
not least the forgotten hundreds of living dead undergoing
psychological if not physical torture day by day as they await a
sentence that may have been passed down unjustly and may dangle over
their heads indefinitely.
Tosin Osasona is a Research Associate and Criminal Justice Expert at
the Centre for Public Policy Alternatives, Lagos, Nigeria.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or
subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your
feed reader.
This entry was posted in African Politics Now, The Nigeria Forum.
Bookmark the permalink.
3 thoughts on “The plight of Nigeria’s living dead”
Justice says:
February 16, 2017 at 5:45 pm
The integrity of a country, is mirrored in their prison system!!
Lanre Oyewole says:
February 17, 2017 at 12:01 pm
Where has the author cooked up these “facts”! For one thing
Nigeria has no blasphemy laws, since we operate a derivative of
English law, and Sharia is limited in application.
Secondly, none of the soldiers condemned to death by the Jonathan
era is still facing risk of death as their sentence has been commuted,
and is still under review.
It helps that authors and publishers exercise restraint and
diligence before going to print with half-truths and sensational
headlines.
tony says:
February 17, 2017 at 12:14 pm
Err, Lanre, you just said yourself that Sharia has (limited)
application in Nigeria. And the author talks about how many death
sentences get commuted. Where exactly is your problem…?
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