Clemency: Onoh prays Tinubu to reverse pardon on Maryam Sanda, drug convicts

By Dennis Agbo 

President Bola Tinubu’s spokesperson successful the southbound east, Denge. Josef Onoh, has differed connected the pardon granted immoderate convicts by the President done the recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Committee connected the Prerogative of Mercy.

President Tinubu successful accepting the recommendations, past week, granted 175 individuals statesmanlike pardon and clemency, including a wide premix of beneficiaries specified arsenic cause convicts, foreigners, and adjacent superior offenders specified arsenic Maryam Sanda who was convicted successful 2020 of culpable homicide punishable by decease for stabbing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, to decease amid a home dispute.

But Onoh is begging the president to cancel the pardon fixed to Maryam Sanda and immoderate others specified arsenic the cause dealers whose sentences were ameliorated.

Onoh contends that it was morally incorrect and a rape of justness that whitethorn undermine the Tinubu administration’s planetary estimation if specified class of superior offenders are conscionable granted pardon for the involvement of prerogative of mercy.

Among the convicts granted statesmanlike mercy see convicted cause offenders specified arsenic Nweke Francis Chibueze, serving beingness condemnation for cocaine trafficking and Isaac Justina, whose condemnation for cannabis possession was reduced.

Onoh said that their clemency represents a profound ethical and organization rupture that demands contiguous rectification due to the fact that their pardons are successful struggle with the ineffable architecture of the regularisation of law, which underpins civilized nine arsenic articulated successful foundational ineligible principles enshrined successful Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution (Section 175) and planetary norms specified arsenic the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 10).

“This act, portion constitutionally permissible, contravene the motivation imperatives of retributive justness and restorative equity, inflicts intelligence trauma connected victims’ families, perpetuates systemic injustice, and erodes the foundational deterrence mechanisms indispensable for societal stability,” Onoh held.

He stated that pardoning Maryam Sanda who inflicted irreversible nonaccomplishment connected the Bello household done an enactment of lethal unit undermines the intrinsic worth of quality beingness and the rule of accountability. 

“Similarly, absolving cause dealers similar Chibueze, whose trafficking perpetuates cycles of addiction, assemblage devastation, and organized crime, signals a motivation abdication that normalizes predation connected society’s astir fragile members, including the younker ensnared successful narcotics webs. 

“Nationally, this portrays Nigeria arsenic a haven for impunity, tarnishing its representation arsenic Africa’s largest ideology and deterring overseas concern successful a federation already grappling with reputational deficits from corruption indices specified arsenic the Transparency International’s 2024 people of 25/100. 

“Internationally, it undermines diplomatic credibility: bodies similar the UN Office connected Drugs and Crime, which lauded Nigeria’s anti-narcotics strides, whitethorn present presumption the medication arsenic complicit successful recidivism, eroding alliances successful planetary counter-trafficking pacts similar the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic successful Narcotic Drugs (1988), to which Nigeria is simply a signatory. 

“For the upcoming procreation younker comprising 70 percent of Nigeria’s 220 cardinal population, per World Bank data, this criminally shapes psyches toward cynicism and criminality. Social learning mentation (Bandura, 1977) posits that observing unpunished elite crimes fosters normalized deviance, perchance spiking younker engagement successful drugs (already astatine 14.4% prevalence per UNODC 2023) and violence, sabotaging the demographic dividend indispensable for Vision 2050.

“Critically, these pardons demoralize Nigeria’s information apparatus—the NDLEA agents who risked lives for Chibueze’s 2010 conviction, oregon constabulary investigators who endured Sanda’s protracted 2017-2020 probe—discouraging enlistment and efficacy successful a unit already strained by underfunding (with NDLEA’s 2025 fund astatine a specified ₦120 billion). 

“This erodes the regularisation of law’s deterrence core, arsenic affirmed by Nigeria’s Evidence Act (2011) and Supreme Court precedents emphasizing accordant enforcement for nationalist order.

“In airy of these irrefutable harms, substantiated by law overreach risks, motivation philosophy, trauma science, and empirical socio-economic data, President Tinubu indispensable reverse these pardons for Sanda a...