Government appoints panel to review death penalty

Nigeria has appointed a special panel to review the application of the death penalty and determine if it should be abolished, officials said on Wednesday. The panel comprising legal experts, human rights activists, police and prison officials, is expected to conduct a study of the death penalty, coordinate a national debate on the matter and review arguments for and against capital punishment, according to a justice ministry statement. It will produce a position paper that will guide President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government to arrive at a new policy on capital punishment. Chaired by Yomi Dinakin, a law professor, its members include Saudatu Mahdi of the Women’s Rights Advancement Project and Bukhari Bello, who heads the National Human Rights Commission. Members were also drawn from religious groups such as the Catholic Church’s Justice and Peace Commission and the National Council for the Propagation and Defence of Shari’ah. Offences that currently attract capital punishment in Nigeria’s statutes are murder and armed robbery, with execution either by firing squad or hanging. But under the strict Islamic or Shari’ah legal codes introduced in 12 states in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, offences attracting the death penalty were expanded to include adultery, with stoning as the prescribed mode of execution. Two women sentenced to death for adultery under Shari’ah had their sentences quashed on appeal. Three others, including two men and one woman, are still awaiting verdicts to their appeals. Most executions for murders in Nigeria were carried out in prison gallows by hanging. But under a succession of military rulers beginning from 1966, condemned armed robbers were executed by firing squad, sometimes publicly. Since Obasanjo’s election in 1999 ended more than 15 years of military rule in Africa’s most populous country of 120 million, no executions have been authorised save for that of Sani Rodi, hanged on the orders of a Katsina State shari’ah court for the murder of a woman and her two children in January 2002. Obasanjo recently expressed his opposition for capital punishment, indicating a personal desire for reforms of the penal system. Scores of people are currently on death row in prisons across Nigeria, awaiting either appeals against their sentences or execution orders.