DEATH ROW PRISONERS: OSHIOMOLE ORDERS THEIR KILLING

The state’s Attorney General, Osagie Obayuwana, told Amnesty International yesterday that Mr. Oshiomhole signed the execution warrants two weeks ago following a request from prison authorities. Edo State prison authorities reportedly complained to the governor that death row inmates involved in a recent jailbreak incident had become “unmanageable.”

Mr. Obayuwana explained that the two prisoners to be
killed were convicted of murder, for which Nigeria’s laws prescribe the death penalty. Mr. Obayuwana did not provide the complete identities of the two prisoners, but said the date of the execution was at the discretion of prison authorities. He added that Mr. Oshiomhole also reviewed the cases of four other death row prisoners, and decided that two should have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment while two are to be released.

Celine Lemmel, a representative in Nigeria for the human rights group Avocats Sans Frontieres (ASF France), today released a statement in which he identified one of the soon-to-be-executed prisoners as Callistus Ike. Mr. Ike, an inmate on death row in Enugu Prisons, was recently brought to Benin Prison to be executed. A source at the Benin Prison disclosed that the gallows were recently inspected in preparedness for an eventual execution.

Lucy Freeman, Amnesty International’s deputy program director for Africa, called Oshiomhole’s signing of the death warrants under the pretext of controlling unmanageable inmates as “a deep disrespect for the judicial process.”