HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVITS PUSH FOR ABOLISHMENT OF DEATH SENTENCE FROM CRIMINAL, PENAL CODE

Human Rights stakeholders have called on the federal government to abolish death penalty in the country and replace it with life imprisonment. They also asked the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly to remove death sentence as punishment for crimes through the amendment of Criminal and Penal Code as well as the Robbery and Firearm Act.

The stakeholders stated this on over the weekend in Enugu during an awareness programme organised by Sant’ Egidio and Cities for Life with the theme: Women Sentence to Death: An Invisible Reality. Director of Cities for Life, Linda Ebeh, disclosed that Nigeria ranked fifth country with highest number of executions between 1994 and 1999, lamenting that most of them, especially women, are innocent.

Ebeh urged the federal and state government to come up with better ways to deal with criminal activities rather than death sentence which has not stopped criminality in Nigeria. On his part, the Enugu State Coordinator of National Human Rights Commission, Valentine Madubuko, stressed that capital punishment is not the best way for Nigerian government to punish convicted criminals. Madubuko said the Commission is working with the authority to ensure that cases of abuse and sexual harassment of female inmates in the correctional centres are curtail.

The National Responsible Community of Sant’ Egidio, Henry Ezike asked the federal government to abolish death sentence, as done in many African countries, including Malawi and Rwanda. Ezike described many of the death convicts as innocent or those without anyone to assist them in the judicial process of the country.