“Every person has a right to life and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life …”
Arguments against the retention of death penalty in Nigeria
On the other side, there is the argument that death penalty has proven over the years to be ineffective in deterring criminals in Nigeria. It has been attractively argued that the Nigerian Police Force and judicial system should be blamed for the increased crime rate in Nigeria. Indeed, the police are scarcely equipped to deal with the high incidence of crimes across the country. Ours is a police force that would arrest a whole neighbourhood in trying to solve the theft of a car. Sadly, the Nigerian police are still far from great advantages of scientific innovations in the world of crime prevention, investigation and control. In the same vein, the plight of our judicial officers is, to say the least, heartbreaking. The years of neglect by successive military regimes and the seeming inability of government to improve allocations to the justice sector have left the justice ministries in a poor state.
It has also been argued that since human is fallible it is inevitable that errors can be committed by the judiciary in convicting an accused. Because of the irrevocability of the result in the case of judicial error, abolition is the only way to ensure that such mistakes do not occur. In this regard, the case of Boudunrin Barinwa readily comes to mind. He was acquitted by the Court of Appeal after a total of 16 years in prison. He had been sentenced to death by a High Court for murder after he had reported finding a dead body near his premises.
No doubt, a morally decadent society like Nigeria can only breed decadent people. A society which parades an army of unemployed youths, where government officials at every level enrich themselves while in office at the expense of the electorate, where social infrastructure and amenities are lacking, is a doomed one. These conditions breed criminal activities. This therefore suggests that there is a stronger link between taking the social and economic needs of citizens seriously and a low crime rate than there is between the death penalty and a low crime rate.
Conclusion
Many countries in the world are gradually abolishing the death penalty or at least observing a moratorium on it. Nigeria should join the trend by expunging without equivocation the death sentence from its laws. It is my contention that if the Nigerian government lives up to its responsibilities of providing basic amenities and creating job opportunities, the crime rate in Nigeria would drop considerably. As stated above, there is a stronger link between taking the social and economic needs of citizens seriously and a low crime rate than there is between the death penalty and low crime rate.
It has been observed that the application of the death penalty itself is a failure of justice and is usually accompanied and compounded by a host of systemic breakdowns including unfair trials which can lead to the execution of innocent, mentally ill or child offenders. Therefore, the time to act is now.
Adelowokan Ayodeji is a student of international relations and diplomacy at Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State.
As already stated by Ayodeji, while some people argue for the death penalty for moral or religious reasons, there is a global push for its abolition in every country. Those pushing for the abolition of capital punishment including Amnesty International insist that the key to deterrence of crime is the increased likelihood of detection, arrest and conviction, since most people who commit premeditated serious crimes do so despite the risks of severe punishment in the belief that they will not get caught.
According to an Amnesty International report on the number of executions carried out in 2012, the leading death penalty is in the People’s Republic of China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United States of America, and Yemen, in that order. Since data on executions in China is classified as state secret information, the reported number of executions is a conservative figure and even at that, China reportedly executed more people than the rest of the world put together. The same report states that, “In the majority of countries where people were sentenced to death or executed, the proceedings did not meet international fair trial standards. In some countries, this included the extraction of ‘confessions’ through torture or other ill-treatment.”
There is more evidence to support the theory that the risk of apprehension is a more effective deterrent to crime than the severity of punishment. So what we need in Nigeria is for the security agencies to increase efforts in the apprehension of criminals. Over the past week, I had a discussion with a couple of people who believe that the Nigeria Police are competent and can fight crime when they want to, but do not have enough resources and have even fewer incentives to risk their lives for. They cited the investigative work that went into capturing the suspects in the Murtala Muhammed Airport robbery and other examples of positive police work, and the allegation that in some kidnap cases, the kidnappers have a Police contact that helps them to stay one step ahead of detection.
Like I said in my original article on this issue, regardless of what side of the debate you are on, what is clear is that we are in a security crisis that needs to be addressed fast.