When the President of Nigeria granted presidential pardons to seventy drug offenders, the news spread like wildfire. At first, people thought it was a joke. But when the list became public, laughter turned to disbelief and then to anger. Never in our history or anywhere in the world has a sitting president extended mercy to that many convicted drug offenders at once. It’s unprecedented, unwise, and unfair.
The idea of a presidential pardon isn’t strange. Mercy has its place. It’s meant to temper justice with compassion, to give a second chance to those who have truly repented. But when mercy is misplaced, it stops being mercy, it becomes mockery. What President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has done is to turn years of anti-drug work, pain, and sacrifice into what can only be called a beautiful nonsense.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has been one of the few agencies that still command respect in this country. Under Brigadier General Buba Marwa, it became a symbol of integrity in the fight against narcotics. In 2024 alone, the NDLEA seized over ¦ 500 billion worth of hard drugs and crushed major cartels. Officers have died on the job. Many more were injured or threatened by powerful traffickers. They gave everything for a safer Nigeria. And now, in one presidential breath, all of that effort has been thrown into confusion.
Tell me, why should an NDLEA officer risk his life again? Why should anyone die chasing drug barons who will later receive presidential hugs in the name of mercy?
Among the pardoned names is one that immediately caught everyone’s attention Maryam Sanda. The woman who killed her husband,Bilyamin Bello, in a moment of rage. Her story shocked the nation. The court found her guilty. She was sent to prison, and that, painful as it was, became a lesson that no one, man or woman, is above the law. Now her name appears on a presidential pardon list.
Reactions have been mixed. Some are furious. Others say she has suffered enough. And then there are those who ask, “If Bilyamin could see this, what would he say?” Would he want her to spend the rest of her life in prison, or would he say, “Let her go, let her raise our children”? It’s a difficult question. Because behind the politics and the outrage are real people, two families still living with the pain, and children who will one day grow up and read this story.
That’s where the dilemma lies. Mercy without meaning becomes injustice. But justice without a touch of mercy can also lose its humanity. Maryam’s case sits right in the middle of that storm between law and love, between punishment and forgiveness.
Still, mercy must have limits. It must never make crime look convenient. It must not turn a lesson meant to reform society into a spectacle of favoritism.
And that’s exactly what this pardon has done.
Justice in Nigeria has become a matter of connection, not conviction. Those with access walk free. Those without are crushed beneath the system’s silence.
When I heard that Maryam Sanda might be considered for pardon, I felt the air in the room change. This was not about mercy. It was about who could reach whom. Yet, if you strip away the noise, you find a mother who has lived years of her life behind bars.
The problem is not the pardon. The problem is the pattern. We pardon those with influence while those who stole out of hunger rot in prison without trial. Some have been forgotten by the very courts that once promised them justice. Young men caught for survival crimes are left to decay, their files gathering dust, their voices fading in the noise of a broken system.
A few days ago, in transit, our vehicle was stopped by over ten NDLEA officers. I wound down my window and asked them if they were aware that the work they were doing was now almost useless. “Are you aware,” I said, “that the President has pardoned some of drug offenders you people sent to prison?” They laughed and said, “Madam, carry your wahala dey go.” It was a laughter full of resignation, the kind that comes when you realize your sweat means nothing to the powerful.
That exchange stayed with me. These men were not angry. They were tired. They knew that their sacrifice meant little in a country where justice is traded like a political favor. You can almost hear the system whisper, not all crimes are equal, only all criminals are.
There are mothers in prison who stole baby food. There are fathers jailed for stealing fuel to power their homes. And there are politicians, men in agbadas with decorated titles, who steal billions and walk free to host thanksgiving services. It is not justice we have in Nigeria. It is a game of survival dressed in official grammar.
We must be honest with ourselves. Mercy, when selective, becomes mockery. Pardon without fairness deepens the wound. Because when the state frees those who have friends in high places but forgets those who never had a lawyer, it turns the law into a weapon.
What is justice when the powerful never pay for their crimes? What is mercy when it is earned by privilege, not repentance?
The law was meant to protect, not to please. But today, it bends for the connected and breaks the weak. That is not civilization. That is organized injustice.
And until Nigeria learns that true mercy is blind to status, every pardon will remain an insult to those still waiting for justice that may never come.
Beyond Maryam, the list is filled with names that make you wonder what kind of message we are sending as a nation. People convicted for importing cocaine, dealing in Tramadol, and running illegal mining operations that destroy communities.
Take Abiodun Elemero, sentenced to life for cocaine trafficking. Kelvin Christopher Smith, convicted in 2023 for importing cocaine. Akinrinnade Akinwande Adebiyi, caught dealing in Tramadol the same drug that has destroyed countless young lives in Nigeria.Then there’s Azubuike Jeremiah Emeka, jailed for importing cocaine in 2021, and Ahmed Adeyemo, who had served nine years of a fifteen-year sentence for cannabis possession.
Now they are free.
These are not names you should find on a list of mercy. Each represents a trail of broken lives addicts, ruined homes, and destroyed futures. These are people who helped fuel the same drug crisis the NDLEA has spent decades fighting. Pardoning them isn’t compassion. It’s betrayal.
And it doesn’t stop there. Some of those freed were illegal miners people who have ripped open Nigeria’s soil, polluted rivers, and left communities unlivable. Their crimes aren’t just economic, they’re environmental. Yet, they too have been forgiven. What lesson does that teach? That you can destroy a whole community and still walk free if your name reaches the right desk?
To make matters worse, the pardon list includes former governors convicted for corruption, men who looted their states and left millions in poverty. People who built personal wealth from stolen public funds now walk free with presidential blessings. Their release makes a mockery of honest Nigerians teachers, civil servants, doctors who still show up to work despite months of unpaid salaries.
Presidential pardons should be sacred, not seasonal. They should be acts of deep reflection, not tools of convenience. This one smells of politics and patronage. It tells Nigerians that in this country, justice is negotiable.
Some of the President’s defenders say this is an act of compassion. But compassion without accountability is chaos. There is no compassion in telling victims that their pain no longer matters. There is no compassion in undoing the work of an entire agency. True compassion is about fairness not favoritism.
These pardons are not guided by justice anymore. They are guided by connection. It’s not about remorse; it’s about who you know. Those who can afford big lawyers or political godfathers get mercy. Those who can’t the poor, the voiceless stay behind bars.
Walk into any Nigerian prison and you’ll see them young men and women imprisoned for petty offences. Some for stealing food. Some for fighting on the street. Some just for being poor in the wrong place. Many have been there for years without trial. No lawyer. No hope. No one to call.
Those are the people who deserve mercy. Not the rich drug lords with friends in high places. Not the corrupt politicians who built empires on other people’s suffering.
I call them the victims of survival crimes the woman who stole bread because her child hadn’t eaten, the boy who snatched a phone to pay school fees, the father who fought a bus driver out of frustration and landed in jail because he couldn’t afford bail.
These are not criminals. They are casualties of a failed system. If mercy means anything, it should begin with them. But in Nigeria, mercy always travels upward, never downward.
The President must remember that leadership is not only about power. It is also about moral courage. Mercy should be earned, not traded. Pardons should lift the repentant, not reward the connected.
The NDLEA must not stay silent. It owes that to its fallen officers and to the Nigerian people. Silence would mean surrender and this country cannot afford that. The agency must speak up, because if this becomes a norm, then justice in Nigeria will become a souvenir handed out to the privileged few.
Then there’s another strange twist,some of those pardoned are already dead. How do you pardon the dead? Can bones feel mercy? What’s the point of freeing someone who’s no longer alive to know it? Unless new evidence proves they were innocent, such pardons are nothing but political theatre gestures meant to look noble but empty in substance.
Every misplaced pardon chips away at justice. It tells victims that their pain is optional. It tells citizens that their trust is misplaced. It tells law enforcement that their courage doesn’t matter.
If mercy must return to meaning, it must be guided by conscience not convenience. A pardon is not a show of power. It’s a moral statement. Every signature carries the weight of a nation’s values.
Nigeria must decide what kind of country it wants to be: one that rewards accountability, or one that excuses crime with a smile. Because when justice becomes negotiable, nobody is safe anymore.
President Tinubu’s pardon has exposed the fragility of our moral foundation. It is, indeed, a beautiful nonsense wrapped in the language of mercy but rotten at its core.
History will not remember this as compassion. It will remember it as cowardice the day Nigeria looked justice in the face and turned away.
Presidential pardon should be an act of moral reflection, not political indulgence. It exists to temper justice with mercy, not to bury justice altogether. But in this case, mercy wasn’t earned it was distributed like souvenirs.
A nation still battling crime has no business freeing hardened criminals. That is not mercy. That is madness. And we, the people, deserve better.
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