In a rustic the place the justice system has a questionable status, prisons overflowing with the harmless, underage, and awaiting-trial inmates, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s current pardon record has sparked anger and disbelief nationwide.
The President, appearing on suggestions of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, authorised pardon and clemency for 175 prisoners and ex-convicts, together with drug traffickers, corrupt politicians, and convicted killers.
Whereas the Presidency insists the gesture goals to “right historic injustices and promote nationwide therapeutic,” many Nigerians say it feels extra like justice turned on its head. The beneficiaries are categorised into the next:
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Drug convicts
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Fraudsters / white-collar criminals
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Unlawful miners
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Foreigners
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Capital offenders (together with folks sentenced to loss of life)
The pardon record additionally contains some posthumous pardons for colonial-era figures and folks executed underneath former navy regimes, plus the Ogoni 9, amongst others.
Many of those pardoned people dedicated critical crimes like homicide, trafficking in exhausting medicine, main corruption instances, or crimes that led to loss of life sentences. Nigerians consider that the pardons undermine deterrence, deflate religion within the judicial course of, and reopen wounds for victims’ households.
4 Names & Their Crimes: The Surprising Instances
Beneath are detailed tales of 4 people from the pardon record.
1. Nweke Chibueze Francis
On Could 14, 2009, Nweke Chibueze Francis was arrested at Lagos’ Murtala Muhammed Worldwide Airport throughout outward clearance for a flight to Holland. Customs officers discovered 1.416 kilograms of cocaine hidden in his baggage. He was convicted underneath Part 11(b) of the NDLEA Act and sentenced to life imprisonment, a punishment becoming the gravity of worldwide drug exportation. Now, he’s free.
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What makes his case particularly controversial is the President’s personal historic drug-related allegations, accusations from a decades-old U.S. civil forfeiture case which have lengthy shadowed Tinubu’s profession (although he has by no means been criminally convicted). For critics, pardoning a cocaine trafficker underneath a president with an analogous stain is an ethical hypocrisy.
Dino Melaye on X described the motion as “unprecedented in historical past,” claiming that no different authorities on the planet had ever granted such a large-scale pardon to convicted drug offenders. He wrote:
Pardon granted 70 drug lords by President Tinubu is unprecedented in historical past. Checks have revealed that it has by no means occurred within the historical past of the world. My recommendation to the President is to scrap the NDLEA. His motion has made a phenomenal nonsensical of all of the efforts of the company since inception.
2. Maryam Sanda
Maryam Sanda grew to become the face of one among Nigeria’s most sensational home violence instances. In November 2017, she stabbed her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, to loss of life throughout a quarrel at their Abuja residence. She was arrested, tried, and in January 2020, sentenced to loss of life by hanging. She spent over six years and eight months in Suleja Medium Safety Custodial Centre, awaiting execution till President Tinubu granted her clemency.
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The household of the sufferer, Bello, has strongly condemned the pardon. They are saying it reopens emotional wounds, mocks justice, and undermines the worth of holding somebody totally accountable after a courtroom of regulation has affirmed guilt by means of all appeals.
3. Hon. Farouk M. Lawan
Lawan is a former member of the Home of Representatives and he was convicted of corrupt practices in 2021. Farouk Lawan became infamous in 2012 after he was caught on digital camera for accepting a $500,000 bribe from oil magnate Femi Otedola through the gas subsidy probe.
The cash trade was a sting operation involving Otedola and the Division of State Providers (DSS) aimed toward catching Lawan within the act after he requested a bribe from the billionaire. He was convicted of corrupt practices in 2021 and sentenced to 5 years in jail, which he has since served, however he was additionally totally pardoned.
Whereas some see his inclusion on the pardon record as innocent, since he’s already carried out his time, others argue that granting official forgiveness to high-profile corruption offenders is controversial, as many view it as letting off the highly effective too simply.
4. Kelvin Prosper Oniarah
Kelvin Prosper Oniarah is a reputation that when struck worry throughout Delta, Edo, and Anambra States. He was the dreaded leader of a kidnapping and robbery syndicate chargeable for the deaths of a number of law enforcement officials, troopers, and civilians.
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He masterminded the kidnapping of Barrister Mike Ozekhome (SAN) on August 24, 2013, alongside the Auchi–Benin highway.
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He orchestrated the kidnapping of a choose of the Edo State Judiciary, a high feminine FIRS official, and Dr. Chudi Nwike, a former Deputy Governor of Anambra State, who was finally murdered whereas in captivity.
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Kidnapped a number of NYSC members and safety brokers, robbing and torturing victims in his makeshift camps.
His operations stretched throughout Delta, Edo, Rivers, and Anambra States, with detention bases in Warri, Kokori, Benin Metropolis, Aba, and even Ugbokolo in Benue State. He was arrested on September 25, 2013, in Port Harcourt by a mixed workforce of DSS and Military operatives and later sentenced to twenty years in jail. Now, after serving simply 12 years, Kelvin Oniarah has walked free, pardoned by President Tinubu.
Human rights teams have described his launch as “a slap within the face” of victims’ households and a chilling message to Nigeria’s safety operatives who risked their lives to seize him.
Honourable Point out
5. The Ogoni 9 (together with Ken Saro-Wiwa and others)
Within the early Nineties, Ken Saro-Wiwa, an acclaimed author, activist, and chief of the Motion for the Survival of the Ogoni Folks (MOSOP), led a non-violent marketing campaign towards Shell Petroleum Improvement Firm and the Nigerian authorities. The Ogoni folks, a minority ethnic group within the Niger Delta, had been struggling catastrophic air pollution of their farmlands and rivers from many years of oil exploration.
However his marketing campaign embarrassed the then-military regime of Normal Sani Abacha and threatened the highly effective alliance between the state and the oil giants. In 1994, following the homicide of 4 pro-government Ogoni chiefs, Saro-Wiwa and eight different activists had been arrested, accused of inciting the killings, and tried by a particular navy tribunal.
