President Muhammadu Buhari’s “needless, politically driven, ill-advised, and hurried decision” to offer pardon to two former governors convicted and imprisoned for corrupt acts, has been denounced by the Nigerian Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA), IgbereTV reports
The HURIWA National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said this in a statement released on Friday.
Senator Joshua Dariye of Plateau State and Mr Jolly Nyame of Taraba State were recently pardoned on health and age grounds, despite the fact that they still have several years to go on their sentences.
Onwubiko was perplexed as to how the President came to the conclusion that, despite their youth, they are too elderly to be imprisoned whereas there are thousands of awaiting trial inmates and convicted prisoners who are above 80 in Nigerian prisons whose offences are as simple as theft of chickens from their neighbours.
According to HURIWA, discrimination based on political ties will jeopardize the rule of law.
The two former governors were among 159 prisoners pardoned by the Council on Thursday at a meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential palace in Abuja.
Tajudeen Olanrewaju, a former military general and minister under the Sani Abacha regime, an army lieutenant colonel, Akiyode, who was an aide of former deputy to General Abacha, Oladipo Diya, and all the junior officers imprisoned over the abortive Gideon Orkar coup in 1990, are among the beneficiaries
