By Dennis Agbo
President Bola Tinubu’s spokesman in the south east, Denge. Josef Onoh, has differed on the pardon granted some convicts by the President through the recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy.
President Tinubu in accepting the recommendations, last week, granted 175 individuals presidential pardon and clemency, including a wide mix of beneficiaries such as drug convicts, foreigners, and even capital offenders such as Maryam Sanda who was convicted in 2020 of culpable homicide punishable by death for stabbing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, to death amid a domestic dispute.
But Onoh is begging the president to cancel the pardon given to Maryam Sanda and some others such as the drug dealers whose sentences were ameliorated.
Onoh contends that it was morally wrong and a rape of justice that may undermine the Tinubu administration’s international reputation if such category of capital offenders are just granted pardon for the sake of prerogative of mercy.
Among the convicts granted presidential mercy include convicted drug offenders such as Nweke Francis Chibueze, serving life sentence for cocaine trafficking and Isaac Justina, whose sentence for cannabis possession was reduced.
Onoh said that their clemency represents a profound ethical and institutional rupture that demands immediate rectification because their pardons are in conflict with the sacred architecture of the rule of law, which underpins civilized society as articulated in foundational legal principles enshrined in Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution (Section 175) and international norms such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 10).
“This act, while constitutionally permissible, contravene the moral imperatives of retributive justice and restorative equity, inflicts psychological trauma on victims’ families, perpetuates systemic injustice, and erodes the foundational deterrence mechanisms essential for societal stability,” Onoh held.
He stated that pardoning Maryam Sanda who inflicted irreversible loss on the Bello family through an act of lethal violence undermines the intrinsic value of human life and the principle of accountability.
“Similarly, absolving drug dealers like Chibueze, whose trafficking perpetuates cycles of addiction, community devastation, and organized crime, signals a moral abdication that normalizes predation on society’s most fragile members, including the youth ensnared in narcotics webs.
“Nationally, this portrays Nigeria as a haven for impunity, tarnishing its image as Africa’s largest democracy and deterring foreign investment in a nation already grappling with reputational deficits from corruption indices such as the Transparency International’s 2024 score of 25/100.
“Internationally, it undermines diplomatic credibility: bodies like the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which lauded Nigeria’s anti-narcotics strides, may now view the administration as complicit in recidivism, eroding alliances in global counter-trafficking pacts like the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs (1988), to which Nigeria is a signatory.
“For the upcoming generation youth comprising 70 percent of Nigeria’s 220 million population, per World Bank data, this criminally shapes psyches toward cynicism and criminality. Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) posits that observing unpunished elite crimes fosters normalized deviance, potentially spiking youth involvement in drugs (already at 14.4% prevalence per UNODC 2023) and violence, sabotaging the demographic dividend essential for Vision 2050.
“Critically, these pardons demoralize Nigeria’s security apparatus—the NDLEA agents who risked lives for Chibueze’s 2010 conviction, or police investigators who endured Sanda’s protracted 2017-2020 probe—discouraging enlistment and efficacy in a force already strained by underfunding (with NDLEA’s 2025 budget at a mere ₦120 billion).
“This erodes the rule of law’s deterrence core, as affirmed by Nigeria’s Evidence Act (2011) and Supreme Court precedents emphasizing consistent enforcement for public order.
“In light of these irrefutable harms, substantiated by constitutional overreach risks, moral philosophy, trauma science, and empirical socio-economic data, President Tinubu must reverse these pardons for Sanda and the named drug dealers to reaffirm commitment to impartial justice. Reversal, via a transparent advisory committee review, would restore equity, heal national psyches, bolster security morale, safeguard youth futures, and elevate Nigeria’s global stature.”
Onoh stated that the reversal of the clemency would honour the unyielding spirit of citizens like himself who embody the true cost of unyielding injustice, noting that such reversal won’t be a mere correction but a moral imperative for a just federation.
He however noted that all things are subject to interpretation, which whatever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
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