The Presidency set tongues wagging last week with the controversial clemency it granted some categories of Nigerians. The clemency as it concerns some questionable names on the list is highly revulsive. It is a clear travesty of the exercise of prerogative of mercy.
It expectedly caused the people’s gorge to rise and stirred nationwide outrage online and offline. Even within the government circles, especially among the security and anti-graft agencies, it engendered bedlam and concerns that releasing some of the convicts on the clemency list could upend the fight against corruption and organized crime.
It is odious that the government, in the exercise of the constitutionally backed prerogative of mercy, could include malevolent characters ostensibly undeserving of clemency. It is about the first time that the exercise will incense obloquy and opprobrium in the scale it did.
The prerogative of mercy is exercised periodically by the president to promote national reconciliation by pardoning and showing mercy on categories of state offenders, especially in cases of extreme age, terminal illness, exemplary behaviour of persons in custody, or where convicts have been victims of systemic injustices and other instances at the president’s discretion. The exercise is also often used to decongest the correctional centers.
However, this year’s exercise came as an aberration because many of the beneficiaries on the list did not meet the criteria. The pardoned individuals, part of a broader list of 175 inmates approved for clemency by the Council of State penultimate Thursday, were convicted of offences, which included drug trafficking, importation and possession of illicit substances such as cocaine, heroin, cannabis, tramadol and Indian hemp.
According to the presidency, the clemency followed recommendations by the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, headed by the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), which cited remorse, good conduct and acquisition of vocational skills by the beneficiaries.
The presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, said some were granted full pardons, while others, including notorious kidnappers and murderers, had their sentences commuted or reduced. The list also includes illegal miners, white-collar convicts, drug offenders and foreigners.
President Tinubu granted clemency to most of them based on the reports that the convicts had shown remorse and good conduct. He forgave some due to old age, the acquisition of new vocational skills, or enrolment in the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).
Fagbemi, had at the Council of State meeting convened on October 9, 2025, listed the late Herbert Macaulay, Maj-Gen. Mamman Vatsa, Prof Magaji Garba, Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Eight, as well as capital offenders, among the 175 convicts and former convicts who received presidential pardon.
The full list, which was released in a statement from the Presidency penultimate Saturday, also included some names of Politically-Exposed Persons (PEPs) on the list, including Farouk Lawan, among others. These names and those granted post-humous pardon, of course, did not raise dust.
However, one of the names that sparked serious outrage was that of Maryam Sanda, who was convicted in 2017 for stabbing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, to death. But it came to light that the late Bilyaminu’s father, Alhaji Bello Isa, actually assiduously and quite strangely pleaded for his son’s killer’s pardon ostensibly on religious grounds.
He, in fact, addressed a joint press conference with Maryam’s father, Alhaji Garba Sanda, to extol President Tinubu for granting her clemency. But some members of Bello’s family understandably rejected pardon for Maryam.
Two of the curious names on the list were also those of Major S. Alabi Akubo, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal possession of prohibited firearms, among others, and one Kelvin Prosper Oniarah, whose kidnapping terror allegedly shook Delta, Edo, Rivers, Abia, Benue, and Oyo states, with detention camps in Warri and Kokori (Delta), Ugbokolo (Benue), Benin City (Edo), and Aba (Abia). Both of them received presidential pardon!
Besides, it is befuddling that as many as 50 of the beneficiaries(about 29 % of them all) were drug-related offenders! Apart from the fact that the premature and mass pardon of drug-related convicts could cause a serious drawback to the nation’s anti-narcotics campaign at a time the illicit drug menace has continued to surge among the youthful population and the implacable cartels that trade in those dangerous drugs, extending clemency to hardened criminals like armed robbers and kidnappers, including those who were convicted for killing security agents, clearly imperils the detectives and others who worked hard to bring them to justice.
Even commuting or reducing their sentences, except in rare cases where penitence is not only genuine but seen to be so, is fraught with danger because they may go after their ‘nemesis’ and extract their pound of flesh whenever they breathe the air of freedom.
Besides, premature and mass pardon of criminals, like some critics have rightly argued, is capable of weakening deterrence and emboldening defiance or intransigence. This is hardly the intention behind the exercise of the prerogative of mercy.
However, knowing the pedigree of the AGF, Fagbemi, as a quintessential legal buff with high integrity, it is shocking that this kind of embarrassing episode can happen under his watch.
Mercifully, he has clarified that the exercise is inconclusive and that no beneficiary of the controversial clemency has been set free yet. The grapevine actually hinted that the list is being reviewed and that all the controversial names will be removed from the final list that will soon be released.
But what the AGF did not say is the alleged sabotage that was believed to have compromised the list. The grapevine squealed that most of the embarrassingly controversial names were smuggled into the list along the line! That those names were, in other words, outside those recommended by the Fagbemi-led committee.
If this is true, then it is a malfeasance that should be treated as the equivalent of high treason. Therefore, the circumstances under which those controversial names were smuggled into the clemency list should be thoroughly investigated and those found culpable should accordingly face the music.
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