Revisiting the death penalty in Nigeria

Obed Sopuruchi was arrested during a police raid in Morogbo, Lagos, in 2004 at the age of 16. He only left his father’s roof for the first time in his life to spend his holidays in Lagos with an uncle after his senior secondary two examinations.

The police continued to extort money from the family to grant him bail and when the family could not afford to pay again, he was charged with armed robbery and was given a case mate, Sunday Edet, a 17 year-old whom he had never met in his life.

Both of them were allegedly shot in prison by the police, both were convicted and sentenced to death solely on confessional statements they were shown for the first time in court.

Prosper Ilada, a former driver in Benin, was pushed to steal his salary from his boss after he hadn’t been paid for three months. After repeated pleas for his salary, Mr Ilada, while returning from the bank with his boss after making cash withdrawal, distracted him for a while and took out the exact amount being owed him from the lump sum. He later went to his boss’s house to explain why he had to resort to such measures but was arrested and charged with armed robbery. He was subsequently sentenced to death and has been in prison for seven years.

These cases and other similar but largely unreported ones have heightened the call for the abolition of death penalty in Nigeria by citizens and human rights groups. Groups such as Amnesty International and Legal Defence and Assisted Project (LEDAP) have called for the abolition of the death sentence, and an immediate moratorium to be declared on all executions, changing all death sentences without delay to terms of imprisonment.

Chino Obiagwu, national coordinator, LEDAP, noted at a workshop on death penalty for journalists, recently, that most of the people on death row today in Nigeria are the poor who cannot afford defence lawyers or who cannot bribe the police.

“The death sentence has been unfairly applied to the poor, uneducated people,” said Mr Obiagwu. “Out of the 924 people on death row today, more than half of them cannot afford lawyers to take their appeal,” Mr Obiagwu added.

Changing Clouds

So, I decided to try my hands on fiction this time around. This story was inspired by my last post on ‘Do you know your genotype’. It was published on bellanaija.com. You can read it on the site here. Please let me know what you think about it, honestly. Your criticisms are very much welcome…

The ancient city of Ibadan didn’t seem to notice the day my first son, Adewale, died. The city was as busy as ever. Cloudless skies hung blue above the city as people went about their business. In the compound beside the hospital where my son died, a couple was being joined in a very loud traditional wedding ceremony.

The sounds coming from their loudspeakers almost drowned the doctor’s voice when he came to tell Dele and I the news. When he said “I’m sorry”, it sounded like “I’m coming”, but he still stood there and I wondered what he meant. But when he said “He is dead”, the words rang clearly and my sorrow, heavier than my weight, fell together with a thud on the cold terrazzo floor. 

As we left the hospital hours later in the rickety station wagon, Baba Femi, our landlord was kind enough to lend us, I wondered why the people on the streets didn’t notice that my precious son had just departed this world. They just carried on as if nothing happened. One bright-eyed boy, about the same age as Adewale, thrust a loaf of bread in my face but quickly retrieved it when he saw the look on my face.

“Gbemisola, Gbemisola!” Dele called beside me. I turned to look at him. He hadn’t cried yet but I knew the tears hung heavy in his eyes and would fall soon. He preferred to cry when he was praying.

“Maybe we should take all the children to the mountain this time,” he said, turning to look at me briefly. “We need to cast out the familiar spirits that have been disturbing them.”