Kogi, Niger, Nasarawa Residents Urge Govs To Sign Death Warrants

Some residents of Kogi, Niger and Nasarawa States have called on their state governors to sign death warrants of prisoners on death row.
This is in the interest of justice and decongestion of Correctional Service Centres, they explained.
Making the appeal in separate interviews, the residents also called for outright abolishment or fine tuning of the law to address its attendant challenges and threats.
NAN reports that the residents responded to the agency’s survey on reasons for the governor’s negative attitude on the death warrants.
The respondents called for outright stripping of the governors of such power provided in the constitution.
Section 212(1), 33(1) and (161) of the 1999 Constitution granted governors the power to exercise mercy and pardon offenders, including signing of death warrants.
A Kogi based lawyer, Mr Taiye Alabi, said most governors do not want to be the cause of death of any person, and have deliberately refused to sign any death warrant before them.
“Looking at the challenges their (governors’) refusal to sign death warrants have constitute to justice system and the correction centres; they should be left out of it through constitutional amendment.
“In as much as there is no need for abolishing the laws on the death penalty, the signing by governors should be cancelled.
“Once an accused is tried and all evidences show and prove that the person is guilty and sentenced to death, he or she should immediately be killed without delay by any governor needing to sign to determine his or her fate,” Alabi said.
In his contribution, Mr Adegboyega Kolade, a legal practitioner, said he supported the death penalty law simply because people unfortunately play politics with everything in Nigeria.
Kolade flayed calls for abolition of the death penalty, moreso that the Holy Books say he who kills by the sword must surely die by the sword.
“This is related to the Mosaic law, which they call an eye for an eye. But a person who took another person’s life, which we all know is sacred, what should be the consequence of his action.
“Infact, it’s for the default of the governors that criminal minded people get encouraged to commit heinous crimes, knowing that they would get pardoned one day.
“As a legal practitioner with 35 years experience, I have several such personal experiences. It encourages more assassinations, wanton killings, ritual killings, banditry, Boko Haram, armed robbery, among others.
“This is what has led to the high level of insecurity that we see today in Nigeria,” Kolade asserted.
Executive Director, Initiative for Grassroot Advancement in Nigeria (INGRA), Mr Hamza Lawal, said many governors since 2016 have refused to sign death warrants for inmates on the death row largely due to the slow process of appeals on those cases.
Lawal, a human rights activist, said: “We all know that an accused or convict has the right to appeal his or her conviction or judgement”.
He noted that such process took time because of huge backlog of cases due to the limited capacity of courts and judges in the country.
Also, Mr Idris Miliki, the Executive Director, Conscience for Human Rights and Conflicts Resolutions (CHRCR), expressed displeasure with the death penalty in the country, saying it should be abolished.