LEDAP asks FG to exercise moratorium on death sentence executions

Recently, there have been concerns regarding Nigeria’s stance on death penalty and the execution of death row inmates.

From the Federal Economic Council recommendation to State Governors to execute death row inmates as a means of decongesting the prisons to reports to the lifting of moratorium on executions by some state governors and the signing of execution warrants by others,

it seems apparent that Nigeria has gradually begun to rescind its declaration to the international community that she exercises moratorium on execution of death sentence.

Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP) expressed concerns about the present state of affairs and believes such acts have undermined the progress Nigeria had made in upholding the defector moratorium on the death penalty.

It viewed that the time is ripe for legislative action towards the exercise of moratorium in line with international best practices.

The group recalled that since 2006, a defector moratorium had been in place on executions of death row inmates in Nigeria, however it was broken with the 2013 executions in Edo State and from then there have been several reports of executions and possible executions, gradually eroding Nigeria’s moratorium stance.

The human rights organisation recognised that about 40% of all death sentences are over turned on appeal, a fact which is an indication of the high degree of wrongful convictions occasioned under the present dysfunctional criminal justice system.

Many of these convicts are indigent; hence do not have the resources to go to the appellate courts and pro-bono service providers are but a few.

The execution of death row inmates would therefore have an unjust outcome in many cases. Yet, this is but one of the several arguments against the executions and in favour of the need for exercise of moratorium on executions.

LEDAP noted that the statement by a former Minister of Foreign Affairs in the UPR Working Group in 2006 that Nigeria “continues to exercise a self-imposed moratorium (on the death penalty),” and urged the government to give legislative impetus to this moratorium, as also recommended by Nigeria’s National Study Group on Death penalty (2004),

Presidential Commission on Reform of the Administration of Justice (2007), the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and in line with the more recent UN resolution on moratorium on the use of death penalty in its resolution A/RES/71/187 of 19th December 2016 and the second protocol to the ICCPR.

It said: “LEDAP continues to pioneer the move towards legislative enactment of moratorium on the use of death penalty in Nigeria and has introduced the moratorium bill in about two states with plans of introducing same at the National Assembly.

We call on the Nigerian Government to abolish the death penalty or in the alternative pass a binding law on moratorium on use of death penalty, pending the improvement of the administration of criminal justice system”, the statement signed by its executive director of programmes, Adaobi Egboka said.

By Ibe Uwaleke