Worrisome: Over 3000 Inmates Awaiting Hangman’s Noose – NCoS Reveals

The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, revealed that 3,298 inmates are on death row across the nation’s custodial centres.

This is as the convicts most often times wait for long period of uncertainty as their cases are being appealed at higher levels thereby leaving inmates awaiting execution to live on death row.

Some of the convicted offenders were usually executed more than 15 years after their convictions with the last execution of inmates on death row carried out in 2016 in Edo State.

And as part of the reforms in the Service, the term ‘condemned criminal’ has been abolished as a way of ensuring that those on death row are no longer stigmatised in line with the NCoS Act 2019 which changed Prisons to Correctional Centres.

The Public Relations Officer of the NCoS, Mr. Abubakar Umar, who stated these on Wednesday in Abuja, said the Service preferred to use a more friendly term of ‘Inmates on Death Row (IDR)’.

Umar explained that death sentences were not always carried out immediately they were imposed, adding that convicts basically await the hangman’s noose in Custodial Centres after being pronounced guilty of capital offences by the courts.

According to the NCoS spokesperson; “As at today, we have a total of 3,298 inmates on death row. They constitute about 4.5 per cent of the total of number inmates in our various custodial centres nationwide.

“Some IDRs had been in custody for many years. Some have been there since they were arrested up to when they were tried and sentenced. Many of them committed capital offences like culpable homicide, armed robbery, terrorism, among others.

“The good thing is that we engage all of them in activities that will reform and modify their behaviours. The goal is to make them better citizens of the nation.

“We also make them undergo personal development programmes like anger management, civic education as well as entrepreneurship. Some of them, who do well and show some glimpse of hard work, industry and discipline, are recommended for clemency to the relevant authorities,” Umar explained.

The NCoS spokesman further said that in the past, many of the inmates on death row were executed before the proliferation of the activities of human rights groups and organisations.

The Service appealed to state governors that are not willing to sign the death warrants, to commute them into other sanctions, adding that such will ensure that the toga of death is removed from them and also help the Service to properly manage them smoothly.

In the words of Umar; “Currently, there is somewhat a kind of moratorium on execution of offenders. Before the moratorium on execution of IDRs became widespread, executions of IDRs were being carried out as and at when due.

“But with the rising activities of human rights groups, many governments shy away from signing the death warrants of these offenders. Though it is still in practice, it is not common as it used to be,” he said.