EDITORIAL: Tinubu’s state pardons must be reviewed!

As part of the activities that marked Nigeria’s 65th independence anniversary, President Bola Tinubu granted state pardon to 175 persons, some of them posthumously. No doubt, he acted in the exercise of his powers under Section 175 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, having been guided by the recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, which the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, chairs.

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The beneficiaries of this gesture include ex-convicts and convicted felons serving their various jail terms. Among them are over 50 traffickers in hard drugs, kidnappers, armed robbers, the corrupt, and murderers. Also included were the Ogoni nine activists who were killed in 1993 by the Sani Abacha military junta. A curious case was the addition to the list of Herbert Macaulay, the late doyen of the Nigerian nationalist movement who was framed and jailed by the colonial regime.

There is no logic holding the list together. The concern of PREMIUM TIMES on this matter is that the inclusion of some of Nigeria’s most dangerous elements, especially drug traffickers and murderers, many of whom are serving the early periods of their sentences, is offensive and indefensible. There is no surprise that a public uproar and scathing criticisms of the list have emerged from across the nooks and crannies of the country.

Very few, if any beyond officials of the administration, appear to be convinced of the argument of the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, that “fairness, justice and national unity” were the obvious drivers of the clemency. The penitence, good conduct, and acquisition of vocational skills by the convicts and inmates, were the other criteria that the president reportedly took into consideration in the discharge of this prerogative of mercy.

But public denunciation of the clemency paid off last Thursday when the AGF, Mr Fagbemi, beat a retreat with a statement that the process was still under administrative review and that none of the said beneficiaries in custody has been released. The Fagbemi-led PACPM did a shoddy job in its recommendations. This has to be said.

We urge that public scrutiny should continue to trail the promised review to ensure that justice is not perverted. The oddity of the list of those pardoned is evident in it being leveraged by an interest group to also demand the pardon of DCP Abba Kyari, who has been detained and is under prosecution by the NDLEA over drug-related charges. Many of those pardoned were those his team reportedly nabbed.

State pardon for convicts is a sensitive act in statecraft, which demands that its invocation should be judicious in correcting glaring cases of the miscarriage of justice. The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni compatriots, in addition to Mamman Vatsa by the Ibrahim Babangida regime, in a phantom coup, and convicts with terminal illnesses, fit this bill. The commutation of death sentences to life jail terms is appropriate too. Capital punishment is barbaric and reprehensible, and it is becoming obsolete in many countries of the world.

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We reject the freedom granted to hard drug traffickers, armed robbers, bandits, and murderers – categories of persons who, decidedly, are enemies of society. Nigeria is not safe with their nefarious activities. That many law enforcement operatives have paid the ultimate price in their bid to arrest them makes this pardon sickening and questionable.

The choice of the figure – 175 persons for those pardoned, which rhymed with the number – Section 175 of the constitution, betrayed the process involved as bereft of due diligence. Clearly, the imprint of the rule of thumb is evident. Political consideration might not be far-fetched in the case of the pardon of an ex-convict former lawmaker, Farouk Lawan. This appears motivated by the need to rehabilitate and reintegrate into the political ecosystem in Kano State for the 2027 general election, for some calculus or other.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Mr Lawan had gotten enmeshed in a bribery scandal that had enveloped the 2012 fuel subsidy scam probe of the legislature. He was convicted and served his term in prison before being released in 2024. Hours after his pardon, he was heard on the radio making a public declaration that he was joining the ruling APC.

PREMIUM TIMES believes that freeing convicted traffickers in hard drugs will have a corrosive impact on the operations of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) headed by Buba Marwa, a retired Brigadier-General. It sends a wrong signal to law enforcement officers at our land borders, air, and sea ports, that their diligent work of arresting criminals can be undone by administrative fiat. Drug kingpins are malevolent characters, ever willing to crush those who stand in their way, and it is not unlikely that these drug barons might go after those who played key roles in their arrest and prosecution when released. Even the judges who convicted them might not be safe.

READ ALSO: Planned amendment of NDLEA Act ‘ll bolster Nigeria’s drug control efforts – Fagbemi, Marwa

We do not see how agencies involved in combating these crimes would be encouraged by this act of clemency. While Richard Akinola, a journalist and human rights activist who once served as a member of Lagos State Prerogative of Mercy Committee between 2006 and 2007, noted that some categories of persons pardoned “were embarrassing,” he however absolved the President of any wrongdoing, as he only signed the list of the clemency panel presented to him. This logic is inadequate. The President ought to have critically evaluated the list, demanding greater detail on each of the proposed persons, as the buck stops on his desk. For Amnesty International, the presidential pardon was capable of “entrenching impunity.” This is absolutely so!

Hard drugs – whether cocaine, heroin, tramadol, or cannabis, etc. – are at the heart of the insecurity scourge in the country. They provide the oxygen that fuels the nefarious activities of kidnappers, bandits, and other criminal gangs. A significant percentage of our youth have been ruined by drugs. On 4 August, the NDLEA destroyed 560,068.3 kilogrammes of assorted hard drugs, said to be the largest cache of seizure destroyed since the agency’s existence.

With the NDLEA scaling up its operational efficiency since Mr Marwa took over its leadership, and earning plaudits from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and synergy with it, efforts should never be made to demoralise the operatives of the agency through ill-advised and reckless political decisions like this act of clemency.

Nigeria’s notoriety in global hard drug trafficking is very much in the news. According to UNODC, Nigeria, “once a key hub” for drugs, has morphed into “a major producer, consumer and distributor.” The recurrent arrests of suspects at our airports are testaments to this evil. Those who make society unsafe, once nabbed and convicted, should be made to face the consequences of their actions.