Illegal miners, white-collar convicts, remorseful drug offenders, and foreigners are amongst those granted pardon and clemency and approved by the National Council of State, on Thursday.
Bayo Onanuga, special adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, in a statement containing the list of those granted clemency, said Mamman Vatsa, Akubo, and Magaji Garba, amongst those granted pardon by President Bola Tinubu.
The list of capital offenders, including Maryam Sanda, Ken Saro Wiwa, and the other Ogoni Eight, was also among the 175 convicts and former convicts who received President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s mercy on Thursday.
President Tinubu had granted clemency to most of them based on the reports that the convicts had shown remorse and good conduct.
The statement said the President forgave some due to old age, the acquisition of new vocational skills, or enrollment in the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).
According to him, ‘President Tinubu also corrected the historic injustice committed by British colonialists against Sir Herbert Macaulay, one of Nigeria’s foremost nationalists. In all, the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, chaired by Lateef Fagbemi, the Attorney-General and Justice Minister, had recommended pardon for two inmates, 15 former convicts, 11 of whom have died.
The committee recommended clemency for 82 inmates and commutation of sentences for 65 inmates. Seven inmates on death row also benefited from the Presidential reprieve. The committee recommended that the President should commute their death sentences to life imprisonment.
Fagbemi presented the committee’s report at the Council of State meeting, chaired by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The list includes Nweke Chibueze, aged 44, serving a life sentence at Kirikiri for cocaine, and Nwogu Peters, aged 67, serving a One-year jail term for fraud. Sentenced in 2013, Anastasia Nwaoba, aged 63. Already served a sentence for fraud.
Others include Hussaini Umar, aged 58. Sentenced in 2023 to pay a fine of N150M in the case by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) case, Ayinla Alanamu, age 63, who was sentenced to seven years for bribery in 2019 and has served the sentence.
Farouk Lawan, aged 62, who was also sentenced to five years in 2021 for corrupt practices and had served the sentence, was also granted a pardon, amongst others.