The opening paragraph of the State House statement on Saturday summarising the persons who benefited from presidential pardon did not sound like a Conclave of Cardinals. Oga Bayo Onanuga’s statement said, “Illegal miners, white-collar convicts, remorseful drug offenders, foreigners, Major General Mamman Vatsa, Major Akubo, Professor Magaji Garba, capital offenders such as Maryam Sanda, Ken Saro Wiwa and the other Ogoni Eight were among the 175 convicts and former convicts who received President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s mercy on Thursday.”
Presidential exercise of clemency and pardon is an old tradition in Nigeria, probably dating back to colonial times, and usually made as part of Independence Day celebrations. The latest one, however, get as e be, to use local Nigerian parlance. The Presidency statement said the clemency was because some convicts had shown remorse and good conduct; some due to old age; some because they acquired vocational skills, and some because they enrolled in the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). The statement also said Tinubu “corrected the historic injustice committed by British colonialists against Sir Herbert Macaulay, one of Nigeria’s foremost nationalists.”
Probably no one in Nigeria today will quarrel with a pardon for Herbert Macaulay. Indeed, we were surprised by it; even my generation of Nigerians never knew that he had ever been convicted in a British colonial court for alleged embezzlement 112 years ago. Since our primary school days, we grew up almost worshipping him as one of the foremost Nigerian nationalists and leaders of the anti-colonial struggle. Since the mid-1980s, his face has adorned the ten naira note [which, unfortunately, is nowhere to be seen now because of inflation]. Macaulay died 79 years ago; maybe it would have been better to remain silent on this matter because I doubt if records of the colonial court are anywhere to be found today.
Ken Saro Wiwa and the other Ogoni Eight were a more recent event. They were convicted and sentenced to death by a military tribunal in late 1995; I remember a judge told me at the time that the evidence against them would not have survived in a civilian High Court. They were speedily executed by General Sani Abacha despite local and international pleas. The execution was so quick that Nelson Mandela heard about it from airport reporters when he arrived in Auckland for the Commonwealth Summit. The old man said, “[Abacha] is very irresponsible and a hardened man.” Aso Rock made to respond, but was advised not to exchange words with Mandela, the world’s biggest moral conscience of the second half of the Twentieth Century. However, Ogoni militancy in that era had resulted in the brutal killing of the Ogoni Four, whose memory the Presidency now says has been honored. This is important because restive communal situations still occur in many parts of the country, and young militants should not be encouraged to hack elders to death because they counsel patience.
Of the 175 individuals who benefited from President Tinubu’s pardon and clemency, the largest number were convicted for illegal mining and drug related offences. Convicts for financial crimes were close runners-up, followed by those convicted for illegal weapons possession and violent offences. It has left many Nigerians flabbergasted and perused, to borrow the words of my secondary school senior student who was fond of big grammar. Pardoning so many illegal miners came only a day after Minister of Solid Minerals Dele Alake publicly stated that he had received death threats for revoking mining licenses, illegal ones most probably. In many parts of the country, the landscape has been scarred by illegal mining, which is violently associated with banditry, which robs the government of huge revenues, and which is also dangerous because illegal mines often collapse on the miners, leading to deaths and injuries. In addition to the use of illegal chemicals in the mines, which poisons waters and kills innocent community members.
Why should such persons be pardoned? Because, according to the Presidency, they served parts of their long prison terms, “most of them based on the reports that the convicts had shown remorse and good conduct… old age, acquisition of new vocational skills or enrolment in National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).” Now, showing good conduct in prison is not a guarantee that a person would show similar good conduct when he is out of prison and will not return to his old ways. Which option does a prisoner have anyway, with high prison walls, barbed wires, sniffer dogs and armed guards all around? Showing remorse is also very iffy; almost every criminal who is apprehended, with the exception of the most hardened ones, will pretend to show remorse, hoping it will facilitate his escape.
Acquisition of vocational skills is a strange qualification for prerogative of mercy. It is not due to lack of skills that many Nigerians commit crimes and go to prison. Yahoo Yahoo Boys, for example, have a lot of IT skills, enough to crack bank accounts and siphon away funds. Which skill can they learn in prison that is more financially rewarding than that?
Even more strange a qualification for earning the prerogative of mercy is that some convicts enrolled in the National Open University of Nigeria, NOUN. When this university was opened in the early 1980s, there was so much controversy around it that New Nigerian Newspaper once did an editorial titled “Close the Open University.” Is it mentioned anywhere in this university’s charter that enrolling in it is enough to wipe away one’s criminal record? If so, NOUN is likely to get a hundred times more applications this year than it can accommodate.
So many convicts for drug offences also featured in this pardon list. Just when National Drug Law Enforcement Administration [NDLEA] is making important gains against illegal drug dealers, bursting smuggling syndicates and uncovering huge drug depots, some of them hidden in posh estates? Hard drug syndicates are so ruthless that they try to kill anyone who tampers with their trade. In the 1990s when the then NDLEA Chairman Major General Musa Bamaiyi visited our offices in New Nigerian, armed soldiers were posted all along the road and on the rooftops of our premises because the Cali and Medellin drug cartels vowed to kill him. I will not be surprised if Brigadier General Buba Marwa is going through the same experience; fighting hard drug trade is not for the faint hearted.
The mother of all puzzles in the pardon list is however the case of Maryam Sanda, the Abuja woman who killed her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, in cold blood seven years ago. I heard early that morning that Bilyaminu had died, and partly because his uncle and guardian Dr. Bello Haliru Mohammed helped me to bury my late brother Ibrahim Jega in 2009, I turned up for the funeral at Gwarinpa cemetery. I was surprised to see probably a thousand, mostly young men at the funeral. I soon heard whispers in the crowd that Bilyaminu’s wife killed him, which explained the very large turnout of mourners.
The Presidency statement said “Maryam Sanda, aged 37, was sentenced to death in 2020 for culpable homicide and had spent six years, eight months at Suleja Medium Security Custodial Centre. Her family pleaded for her release, arguing that it was in the best interest of her two children. The plea was also anchored on her good conduct in jail, her remorse, and her embracement of a new lifestyle, demonstrating her commitment to being a model prisoner.” Not mentioned here was that the murder she committed, which all the courts upheld, was most heinous, of her own husband, father of her two children, deliberate after several failed attempts, literal stab in the back while he was praying, that her powerful family tried to cover it all up by sweeping the crime scene, that a lawyer alleged attempts to bribe the judge, and that the murder was because of jealousy. She is on the list of Presidential Clemency, that is full pardon, not the 7-person “List of Inmates on Death Row Reduced to Life Imprisonment.”
There are many cases all over this country of spouses abusing and sometimes killing their mates. The usual excuses are early or forced marriage, domestic disputes and, quite often, jealousy. If Maryam Sanda gets away with this, is it not a license for every Nigerian wife to kill her husband [or vice versa] because of jealousy? So-called good conduct, so-called remorse, “embracing a new lifestyle” and having small children all do not atone for her very heinous crime. At the very best, the death sentence should be commuted to life in prison with hard labour.
