If Tinubu insists on exercising this right, let him do so for prisoners of conscience, wrongly convicted individuals, and those who have served decades for non-violent offenses.
By FAROOQ A. KPEROGI
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, like his predecessors, has the constitutional right to grant clemency. He draws this right from Section 175 of the 1999 Constitution, which grants him the power to pardon convicts and commute sentences. But constitutional rights are not moral shields, and mercy must ennoble justice, not mock it.
Prerogative of mercy, designed to temper justice with compassion, has, in the estimation of several people, been cheapened by the recent pardons Tinubu approved for murderers, drug traffickers and other hardened criminals.
The list of 175 beneficiaries of Tinubu’s pardon includes people convicted of violent crimes and narcotics offenses. Among them is Maryam Sanda, sentenced to death in 2020 for killing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, in a fit of murderous fury.
The case captured the imagination of the nation because it symbolized both the collapse of domestic civility and the delicate hope that justice could still work in Nigeria. Now, Tinubu’s pardon threatens to turn that hope to scorn and righteous indignation.
Following fierce, furious, sustained public backlash, the federal government hurriedly clarified on Thursday that no inmate has yet been released under the current Presidential Prerogative of Mercy exercise. Attorney-General Lateef Fagbemi said the process “remains at the final administrative stage” and that it is still undergoing verification and review.
That acknowledgement of bureaucratic pause is what has prompted this reflection. If the government is really and truly reviewing the pardons, it still has time to salvage its moral standing. Once the releases occur, it will be too late to reverse the damage.
The most exasperating aspect of the exercise is how it was packaged. When news broke that Maryam Sanda was among those granted clemency, the outrage was instantaneous. To soften the blow, a press conference was convened, and Bilyaminu Bello’s biological father by the name of Ahmed Bello Isa, who had been entirely absent from his son’s life, was suddenly thrust before cameras to claim credit for Sanda’s release.
Reading from what appeared to be a prepared statement, he said he had sought the pardon because he wanted his grandchildren to have the benefit of growing up with their mother. The wealthy and well-connected father of Maryam Sanda, who appeared to have engineered the news conference, sat beside the deadbeat father and enjoyed the theater.
Meanwhile the family that had adopted, nurtured, educated and buried Bilyaminu Bello watched in shock and disempowering rage. They said the pardon reopened old wounds and compounded their grief with humiliation.
Forgiveness is virtuous only when it is voluntarily given. It can never be coerced or legislated. We all know that the spectacle of the biological father’s news conference was designed to sanitize the gross injustice of Maryam Sanda’s unmerited pardon and to launder the privilege of her parents through a choreographed display of mawkish sentimentality.
But it succeeded only in deepening public disgust. No one disputes that mercy has a place in governance. A humane system recognizes remorse and rehabilitation. But presidential pardon must be the culmination of justice, not its subversion. When the powerful can engineer clemency for their own, while the poor rot in overcrowded prisons for petty theft, mercy becomes a weapon of inequality.
If the rationale for the pardons is “good conduct,” how was that measured for an insensate, blood-soaked murderer like Maryam Sanda who was sentenced only five years ago? Where is the proof of her repentance, the evidence of her rehabilitation, the testimony of those hurt by her actions?
Were the adoptive parents of Bilyaminu Bello even consulted? It’s obvious they were not. The public statement signed by Dr. Bello Haliru Mohammed on behalf of the family calling the pardon “the worst possible injustice any family could be made to go through” is all the proof you need.
“To have Maryam Sanda walk the face of the earth again, free from any blemish for her heinous crime as if she had merely squashed an ant, is the worst possible injustice any family could be made to go through for a loved one,” the statement said.
The presidency’s statement that many pardoned inmates had learned trades or earned degrees in custody is neither here nor there. Drug barons can run classroom workshops, and murderers can earn degrees, but that does not erase their crimes. It doesn’t give justice to the victims of their transgressions.
The integrity of justice does not lie in whether convicts can read the Bible, recite the Qur’an or weld steel. It lies in whether the law retains meaning after the verdict.