Governors’ disdain for death penalty

[Mirror]

Objections have been raised by some state governors in regard to appending signature to death warrants issued by courts of competent jurisdiction. This is not to be confused with academic debates for or against the death penalty. In the early days of my career as a scholar, I had joined issues with Professor Patrick Igbinovia, then at the University of Benin, in The Guardian, between September and October 1989; hotly contesting his views in support of the death penalty. I still agonise that civilised and sophisticated societies should retain the death penalty in their laws.

But we live in a different context altogether. Are the Nigerian state actors, especially the state governors, civilised and sophisticated? If they are, why do they steal public funds entrusted in their care for the delivery of public good, safety and welfare and stash them away in private foreign accounts? Isn't this a characteristic of scoundrels? Isn't the death penalty in the statute books part and parcel of the constitutional package that the governors swore to uphold? If you swear to an oath, are you not obligated to discharge the content of the oath? Since burden and benefit go together, is it proper and lawful for the governors to enjoy the perquisite of office and refuse to discharge the crucial aspects of the constitution that they swore to uphold?

What is important here for Nigerians to know is that signing the death warrant issued by a court of law is a statutory obligation that a state governor must discharge. The governors are not doing Nigerians a favour by signing the death warrant. It is their job to do so; failure which they should resign from office. Parturition, child-birth, is a bloody sight and a painful experience for the woman; but she must go through it to have her bundle of joy—the child she wants to cherish and be proud of as the fruit of her womb. The price of civilisation is human sacrifice. Nations have been known, in recorded history, to sacrifice even their leaders to forge ahead. Jerry Rawlings did exactly that to put Ghana on the path of sanity, order and civilised growth; how much less miscreants, renegades, robbers, kidnappers and terrorists, who have deprived thousands of innocent citizens of their inalienable rights to life!

Besides, the argument being made by some of the governors that death sentence is barbaric, outmoded and that signing the warrant is tantamount to taking part in a killing spree is illiterate logic in a jungle or in a war situation. The argument regarding the propriety or otherwise of the legal provision of capital punishment in the statute books is academic; and it is the enterprise of cerebral scholars and legislators who labour to compel the state to administer resources for the benefit of every member of society, to foster the conditions of egalitarianism and reduce the propensity to crime; not for state governors in power striving to ensure public safety and order. The spate of insecurity in the country calls for drastic measures; not academic debates regarding the death penalty by sitting governors who should be sweating to justify their expenditure of security votes and ensuring peace and public order necessary for economic activities that should constructively occupy the active population, thus dissuading them from acts of criminality.

Even on the sentiments expressed about the legal killing of killers, the conduct and record of most of the governors is not particularly impressive. Can the governors swear before the most potent shrines in their villages that they do not have killer squads in their payroll? Who are the Nigerians that bought dangerous weapons for their thugs to terrorise voters and snatch ballot boxes to steal electoral victory from their competitors? Who are the people that send hired killers after their political opponents to clear the ground for their ascension to power? Who are the ones that provide funds to arm militants in the Niger Delta? Who are the people behind major oil theft and oil bunkering in the country? Who are the people that created the political machine in the North Eastern part of the country now killing and maiming innocent citizens in their thousands, called the Boko Haram, if not the state governors?

Why are the governors now playing the ostrich when duty calls for them to participate, by law, to restore public order, which, at any rate, they had contributed to truncate? It might also be said of some of the governors that their henchmen and foot soldiers might have been seriously implicated in mass murder charges that attract the capital punishment; and the subterfuge now is to invoke all the sentiments against the death penalty to let their criminal cronies off the hook. In truth, the governors are not the ones to whip up sentiments against the death penalty because a host of them are merchants of death.

It might also be said of a few of the governors that some of them are not sponsors of killer squads; and genuinely abhor appending their signatures to death warrants. In this, they merely render themselves as misfits for the occupancy of the position of state governors; not to be exculpated for seeking to renege on their constitutional obligation to give effect to the law. The governors need to be educated that in the present state of affairs in the country where gang of killers and terrorists are daily decimating communities and sending many to early graves for no justifiable reasons, refusal to sign the death warrant would be an open invitation to anarchy. It is a most inopportune time to kick against the death penalty.

Some governors have been known to sponsor the perpetration of violent crimes; as some of them have been fingered for bank-rolling assassins, robbers, kidnappers, and terrorists. People go to war not necessarily because they like to spill blood, but because it is a call to duty, and an act of patriotism. If a nation's survival depends on killing renegades and terrorists, so be it.

National Mirror