Last week, whilst reading an essay and half-listening to the AIT’s news broadcast on my computer, I was so startled by an item in the broadcast that I dropped the essay and focused on the news. The startling news that compelled my attention was this: that, as a means of decongesting the prisons, Nigerian governors wanted to expedite the execution of condemned criminals.
I looked up in time to see Governor Theodore Orji of Abia speaking to reporters on the issue.
I wanted to write down Mr. Orji’s exact words, but couldn’t find a pen quickly enough. But the next day, the Tribune reported on the matter. In the words of the paper, “The National Economic Council (NEC), presided over by the Acting President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, on Monday, resolved that all condemned criminals should be executed, as the government explored ways to decongest the nation’s prisons.” It continued: “Briefing State House correspondents on the decision of the council after the meeting, Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State revealed that the council was faced with the problem of those who had been condemned to death but were still kept in jail because the authorities had not mustered the courage to execute them. He said even though the state governors were not the ones to initiate the execution process, they were willing to obey the order by actually executing those found guilty of serious offences.”
Then the paper quoted the governor’s exact words: “The council was faced with the problem of those who committed capital offences and have been condemned to death, but are still living because perhaps the authorities have not mustered the courage to execute them and in considering that the governors were seen as not been very responsible for that, because the thing has to be initiated from the prison itself. It is when the recommendation comes to the governor that it can be implemented.” Mr. Orji then affirmed that “the governors are willing to obey this order by actually executing those who have been found guilty of crimes of murder, kidnapping and armed robbery, among others.”
The council, Governor Orji revealed, also “considered the people who are in detention.” He disclosed that “80 per cent of those who were in detention were awaiting trials and it was decided that efforts should be made to ensure that the prisons were decongested by looking into the cases of those people who are awaiting trials.” In a rare display of humane concern, the governor stated that “there is no basis for somebody who has not been convicted to be in prison for 10 years. So, the proper thing is to decongest the prison by looking at these cases and leaving them to go.”
Put quite simply, the governors’ prescription on executions struck me as crude, coarse and hypocritical. It amazed me that Nigerian governors would, without a sense of irony or shame, push for quickening the pace of executions of any criminals. For, truth be told, many serving and former governors as well as other government officials, are the nation’s biggest criminals. So, if governors must visit the subject of hastened executions, why didn’t they spend some time to create a protocol for executing those of their number who act as criminals-in-chief in their respective states?
Why not, indeed?
Two weeks ago, I commented on a sobering report by the Washington, DC-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) on the phenomenon of illicit fund transfers by African leaders. The report revealed that African nations, led by Nigeria, illegally exported – and this was a conservative estimate – close to one trillion dollars between 1970 and 2008. Nigerians – those who are defined as “stakeholders” – led the way with $240.7 billion.
My question to Nigerian governors and other government officials: Who will execute you when you steal your people blind? Who will tie you to the stakes for exporting Nigeria’s cash to foreign banks and importing misery to your land? Pray, where’s your own executioner?
The timing of the governors’ statement on executions was intriguing. As I write, former Governor James Ibori of Delta is in hiding – perhaps in the deltaic creeks or even in a foreign country. Mr. Ibori is dead set against submitting himself to the EFCC. Ibori is once again being investigated for alleged acts of corruption and money laundering during the eight years he presided as governor.
How about the Halliburton bribe scandal that the Nigerian government appears determined to keep concealed? Several online and print media have reported that the names of four or five former presidents are on the list of Nigerians who took bribes to funnel contracts to Halliburton. Why didn’t the governors demand that the government prosecute these economic saboteurs and herd them off to jail for the rest of their lives – or execute them? Too many Nigerian public officials – presidents, governors, ministers, and local government councilors – are guilty of setting the tone of misery in their homeland. They gut the public treasury and cart away billions of dollars in looted funds to foreign banks. These official thieves create grave economic hopelessness, low wages, and serious unemployment. Their actions generate and fertilize such crimes as armed robbery and 419 scams.
That Nigeria has a prison congestion crisis is well known. Prisoners and detainees are kept in overcrowded prisons, whose conditions are fetid. There are, of course, many men and women who have been properly convicted. Sadly, there’s a scandal as well – that many detainees and convicts are innocent of any crimes. There are, simply, too many victims of a corrupt system tailored to perpetually incarcerate indigent suspects or to convict those who cannot afford to bribe law enforcement or to hire good lawyers.
Governor Orji and his fellow governors must know about this horrible fact of Nigeria’s penal system. They must know that many convicts, including those on death row, are absolutely innocent.
The answer to prison congestion, then, is not to go on a spree of execution. Instead, Nigeria should – in the short term – embark on an audit of its prison population to separate those who are there for provable crimes from those pulled in by corrupt police officers as well as serious lapses in the judicial system. In the long run, the nation should get serious about cracking down on the real villains – public officials, including governors – whose thieving expertise breeds other crimes. Until governors, serving and former, as well as other top officials are held to account for their unconscionable crimes, until their crimes are properly defined as capital in nature, Nigeria should not be in a hurry to start an execution bonanza.
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