Nigeria / Death Penalty

Hundreds to Die to Clear Prisons
Agence France-Presse dispatch in The Sydney Morning Herald, April 23, 2010
"Nigeria's state governors have backed the execution of more than 300 prisoners on death row as a way of clearing space in the overcrowded jails of Africa's most populous country. 'It was agreed that those people who have been condemned should be executed accordingly,' said Theodore Orji, the Governor of the south-eastern state of Abia, after a meeting of the 36 state governors in Abuja on Tuesday. A total of 330 prisoners are on death row in a country where capital punishment remains on the statutes despite rarely being implemented. The last official execution was in 2002 but Amnesty International, which campaigns against the death penalty, said it had found evidence of continuing secret executions in prisons. The governors, who have the power to sign execution orders, said also that 80 per cent of Nigeria's prison population was awaiting trial and efforts should be made to 'leave go' those serving lengthy remands, Mr. Orji said. Koyode Odeyemi, of the Nigerian Prisons Service, said 36,000 of the 40,106 inmates were awaiting trial.
The human rights activist Chidi Odinkalu, of the Open Society Justice Initiative, said instead of clearing a death-row backlog, the governors should look at the methods used by the police to tackle crime. 'There is a major problem in Nigeria with the death penalty pending. The police cannot investigate adequately. The only way of investigation the police has is torture followed by confession,' said Mr. Odinkalu, a lawyer."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]