Death by Instalments!

Prisoners waiting for execution

Amnesty International’s 2008 Report detailing the inhuman condition of prisoners awaiting execution in Nigeria, once again brings to focus the many flaws in Nigeria’s legal system
By Chukwu Eke
He was brought to court, after several months in police cell, and the following charge read to him: “You, John Chielozona, with others now at large, did on 13th March, 2000, with lethal weapon, robbed the residents of World Bank Estate, Owerri. Are you guilty or not?”
In an outburst of emotion, he cried and said he was not guilty. According to Chielozona, “he was returning from his shop on the night of the robbery when the police arrested and took him to their station.” He continued to plead his innocence even as he was led out of the court to a waiting Black Maria.
The trial lasted for a long time, during which period he was transformed to a walking corpse by the harsh condition in the awaiting trial cell of the prison. The family being poor could not do much to help him. In the end, he was pronounced guilty and condemned to die by hanging.
James Chielozona, his elder brother who was the only member of the family in the court that day wept bitterly. He knew it was the end of the road for his younger brother since the family lacked means to appeal his case. He went home and cried more and more with the other members of the family.
Years after the judgement, however, their pains are not yet assuaged; instead it gets exacerbated any time they get a letter from prison and their brother tells them the physical and psychological torture he is going through awaiting the hangman.
A member of the family captures their predicament thus: “When I was younger, one of my hobbies was visiting zoological gardens. I liked to see wild cats, monkeys, large snakes and other beasts in their cages. One day, an incident changed all that. “I was in Enugu Zoo with my friends that day, when one of the attendants threw a cock into the cage of a large python. We all rushed to see how the predacious python would swallow the unfortunate bird. But it appeared it was not in a mood to eat, as it coiled inside the cave in the centre of the cage, seeming to show no interest in its food. And as I watched the bird standing transfixed, with its eyes on the coiled heap of the snake, knowing that any moment could mean the end of it, something caved in in me and the tears flowed. I cried for the helpless fowl. I hated the man who threw it inside there to die a painful death. I cursed the python that would not eat it immediately to save it the agony of waiting. Since then. I never visited the zoo again.
“But it was only a bird's life that so affected me. Now a human being is suffering the same fate as the bird. But he is not just a human being, he is my own brother in the cage, where predacious death gnaws at him every minute, killing all of us by instalments. It is a fate you can’t imagine, unless you suffer it,” he said.
Yet Chielozona is just one of many Nigerians whose lives have been modified by physical and psychological torture and whose families are passing through no less pains. They number among the several hundred Nigerians who are condemned to death by Nigerian courts and who, for many years, have lived in the shadows of death, without meeting their fate or being pardoned.
Amnesty International, the global human rights body, in a recent report put the number of inmates awaiting the hangman in Nigerian prisons at 731. Eleven of them, it said, are women, and more than 40 were minors at the time the offences for which they were condemned were committed. Many of them have been there for between 10 and 25 years. Those of them who filed appeal have waited for years without anything coming out of it.
Jafar, a 57-year-old man, is one of them. He has spent 25 years in prison, including the two years of awaiting trial. He was sentenced to death for armed robbery in 1984. He appealed against the judgement at the Federal High Court. Ever since, he has not known his fate. Though his case is still on-going, he has never been taken to court for the hearing since he has no lawyer.
Tafa told Amnesty researchers that he was a shoemaker. He had bought a motorbike that turned out to be a stolen product. He was arrested by the police and taken to their station as a witness. However, while attempting to arrest the suspected thief, the police allegedly killed the man. From that moment on, Jafar became the murder suspect and within three years, he was on death row.
Rebecca, a 30-year-old woman is another. She was sentenced to death for murder and conspiracy on February 8, 2005 after four years of awaiting trial. According to the verdict, she murdered her partner who was also her lecturer at the university. Rebecca denied the charge and claimed that she witnessed three masked men murdering him.
She said: “I became a suspect because I could not identify the men.” Rebecca filed an appeal in February 2005, but she has not been taken to court ever since. Instead, she was transferred from Port Harcourt prison to Kirikiri, making her chances of getting justice remote. She told Amnesty International: “I am tired. I don’t know what will happen next.”
Another case in Amnesty’s latest report is that of a man who claimed to be 80-years-old. He told the organisation that he had already spent more than 25 years awaiting execution. He looked really old and sickly, according to Amnesty. There is yet another, a woman, who was sentenced to death by a Sharia court for committing abortion.
Princewell Akpakpan, a lawyer with the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), told The Source of the case of Uchenna, a minor on death row in Aba prison. Uchenna has been in prison since 2002, awaiting execution for murdering a fellow boy– a crime which he allegedly committed when he was only 16. The CLO has been waging a legal battle to save him from the gallows.
But why are there so many Nigerians on death row?
Gabriel Giwa-Amu, a lawyer, said politics was the culprit.
Giwa-Amu: “You see, with politics comes a lot of politicking. It is a known fact that most civilian governors are hesitant to sign execution warrants. Also, it is a fact the military was doing that easily. That may be the reason for the high number of awaiting execution inmates. Besides, some of those who are alleged to be on the execution list are persons who have political affinity with persons who know persons in power. So, there is always this influence that comes to bear when it is about somebody who has a chain of influence with the authorities whose mandate it is to sign the execution warrant. From the traditional rulers, the chief, etc. anybody who have access to the governor can influence him to withold his signature on the execution warrant,” Giwa-Amu said.
On the position of the law regarding how long a condemned person must stay before facing execution, Giwa Amu said: “In the absence of an appeal, there is a statutory period of 90 days. But that is often at the pleasure of the governor. If the governor withholds his assent, even if there is no appeal, there is nothing anybody can do. He may withhold as long as he pleases,” Giwa-Amu said.
Akpakpan on his part is of the opinion that justice system in Nigeria is responsible for the high incidence of persons on death row. Akpakpan: "Between the police and the Directors of Public Prosecution (DPP) in the states, justice is given a mortal blow. The courts merely announce her obituary. The police have no modern means of fighting and investigating crime. They lack both the equipment, training and the will to do so. That is why instead of fighting crime, the police busy themselves with perpetrating inhumanity. Those they bring to court are mostly innocent people who could not meet up with their monetary demand. They arrest passers-by at the scene of crime, even when they are aware the criminals have left. These are the people they take to court as murderers, armed robbers, et cetera.
“They are those that the equally corrupt DPPs prosecute and the courts find guilty and condemn to death. Besides, the judges are over-worked. A judge working from 9 a.m to 5p.m will surely have diminishing returns to contend with. That is actually what happens when judges don’t have time to read case files. The victim, you will agree with me, is justice. Thus you have so many people on death row, most of them innocent people. Inside the prisons, a lot of intrigue plays out to keep the condemned persons waiting. Unless government listens to voices of justice and reform the system, from the police to the courts, so many innocent people will continue to suffer injustice,” Akpakpan said.
Akpakpan's position reiterates the findings reported by Amnesty in its report. According to the report, most death penalty convictions are based on confessions, which are often extracted through torture. One example cited in the report is the case of one Samuel, a 45-year-old man who was incarcerated as a result of the theft of a motorcycle belonging to a police officer. He was arrested on May 9, 2007 and detained in a police station for nine days, during which he was severely beaten while hanging upside down until he became unconscious. Samuel told Amnesty researchers that “the first time there were four police officers who beat me. The second time three, the third time five and the fourth time seven. After three, four or five minutes of this, I would be unconscious.”
Emmanuel, 29, is another inmate who was forced to confess. According to him “the state CID wanted to kill me; they killed people beside me and shot some. So I confessed.” “He has been awaiting trial for almost seven years. And has no lawyer.
He was working as a salesman when one evening, a man was robbed in the market. The police arrested many salesmen, Emmanuel inclusive. Although he was not identified by the victim, he and three other suspects were remanded in prison. Only one was released on bail, the only suspect who had a lawyer.
Chino Obiagwu, national co-ordinator, Legal Defense and Assistance Project (LEDAP), said the question of guilt and innocence were irrelevant in such situations.
“It is all about if you can afford to pay to keep yourself out of the system - whether that means paying the police to adequately investigate your case, paying a lawyer to defend you or paying to have your name put on the list of those eligible for pardon,” Obiagwu said.
He went on to talk about the police is system of extracting confession through torture. “Under Nigerian Law, if a suspect confesses under pressure, threat or torture, it can not be used as evidence in court. Judges know there is widespread torture by the police and yet they continue to sentence suspects to death based on these confessions, leading to many possibly innocent people being sentenced to death,” he said.
Ibuchukwu Ezike, Acting Director-General, CLO, also said that the Nigerian constitution specifies that confession should be made before a lawyer or recorded with video. “That is the only kind of confession that stands in law. But, of course, judges are not always interested in human rights. They are often in a hurry to pass judgement based or what is available that they forget what is at stake: justice. Hence, they accept confession extracted from police brutality and condemn an accused to death,” Ezike said.
He added that judges should show more concern for the right of the accused, to make sure there was no infringement before delivering judgement.
Even as many prisoners on death row have for years awaited execution, the courts continue to sentence more and more others to death.
On Monday, November 10, 2008, a Lagos High Court sentenced one Jamu Odusanya, a bricklayer, to death by hanging. Odusanya was found guilty of the murder of one Victor Eze on or about February 19, 2003. Indeed, why are people still being condemned to death when the practice is no longer in vogue in most countries of the world?
The international community, having found death penalty cruel and inhuman, has adopted several resolutions aimed at abolishing the death penalty. The second protocol to the ICCPR, and the resolution of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights adopted at its 26th ordinary session in Kigali, Rwanda, called upon all states that maintain death penalty to consider establishing a moratorium on execution. In December, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions.
As far back as 1977, 16 countries had abolished death penalty for all crimes. Today, 137 out of the 156 member-states of the UN have abolished death penalty in law or in practice. Among this number are all the member countries of the African Union, but seven. Has Nigeria join the abolitionist countries in practice even though execution is still part of her law? Could it be why there are many prisoners on death row in Nigerian prisons?
The Amnesty report insists that execution is still going on, in secret, in Nigeria, although none has been reported. The report says that at least seven convicts were executed in 2006, and quoted a fellow death row convict and a religious minister as witnesses to the executions. Other prisoners held in cells where they can see executions also testified to Amnesty, and said that after a prisoner had been hanged, other death row prisoners are forced to clean the gallows.
Arthur Angel, whose cell was close to the gallows, told Amnesty : “I spent two years on execution cell and I watched the executions live. The wardens sometimes do not have enough courage to watch.”
Ezike told The Source it was the most cruel way of killing a person. “To be told you will die is one painful thing but to be kept for so long in a most dehumanising condition, where you see your death every day, is sheer sadism. Death row prisoners are still human beings, no matter their crime. If you want to pardon them, you do that. If not, execute them within a reasonable period of time. Not this killing by instalments that is going on. Psychological killing is worse than physical elimination. That is why many of the death row immates are going mad.
“We have known and fought this system. Capital punishment has not reduced crime in the society. So why go on with it? Why not try another deterrent? Even from the religious angle, only God has the right to take life,” Ezike said.
Fred Idemudia, a public relations practitioner, however cautions that the issue of abolition of death sentence in Nigeria should be handled with care.
Idemudia: “People have their peculiarities. The rate of violent crime in Nigeria surpasses most others. Death sentence, I must say, has been a deterrence, without which cases of armed robbery, for instance, will increase. The area that should be looked into is making sure innocent ones are not punished. Let those who live by the sword die by the sword.”
But Chuma Ezeanyanaso, a consuitant economist, disagrees. He said instead of deterring criminals, execution had rather made them more daring and heartless.
"No matter how many criminals you kill and how you kill them, there will still be more and more violent crime. Unless the primary causes of crime, such as poverty, unemployment and ostentantious life styles of a few in society are checked, there is no deterrence for violent crime. So let the excution of criminals stop in Nigeria, as in other civilised countries. They have served us no useful purposes," Ezeanyanaso said.