Although, the pardon last week of former governors of Taraba state, Jolly Nyame, and Joshua Dariye of Plateau state, among 159 other convicts, by the Council of State, has drawn the ire of many Nigerians, including the Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, human rights organisation, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), and fiery lawyer Femi Falana, the underlying wisdom in the amnesty cannot be ignored.
Attorney General and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami, who briefed journalists at the end of the meeting of the Council of State, was however silent on the identity of the beneficiaries of the council’s magnanimity. He said the recommendation came after the council received the report of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Prerogative of Mercy.
“In the exercise of the powers on the granting of pardon, precisely on the 28th day of August 2018, the president put in place a committee, Presidential Advisory Committee on Prerogative of Mercy, which was saddled with the responsibility of visiting the country’s correctional facilities and making recommendations to the president on the exercise of his power of mercy and compassion.
“In line with that, a memo was presented by the president this afternoon to the council through which the report of the committee was presented to council for its advice. The committee made a submission of 162 people presented to the president for such consideration.
Malami said the Council of States endorsed 159 out of the 162 recommended convicts and advised the president to grant them pardon and mercy, but rejected three of the recommended convicts”.
Nyame, a former governor of Taraba state (1999 to 2007), was serving a 12-year jail term at the Kuje Prison over N1.64 billion fraud, with the Supreme Court upholding his conviction in February 2020.
Dariye, former governor of Plateau state was jailed in 2018 for stealing N1.6 billion as governor between 1999 and 2007. He was elected senator in 2015 and jailed in June 2018, during which he served out his tenure as lawmaker until 2019.
Justice Adebukola Banjoko of the FCT High Court Abuja had on June 12, 2018 sentenced Dariye to 14-year imprisonment on charges of criminal breach of trust and two-year jail for criminal misappropriation.
However, the Court of Appeal in Abuja on November 16, 2018, commuted the sentence to 10. The Court of Appeal held that section 416 (2) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, prohibited the imposition of a maximum sentence on a first offender.
Dissatisfied, Dariye proceeded to the Supreme Court, where Justice Ejembi Emo, a member of the five-man panel, ruled that the former governor’s appeal “succeeded in part” having quashed his conviction in respect of charges of criminal misappropriation.
Dariye’s effort to exit the prison in 2021 failed as a five-man panel of the apex court, led by Mary Odili (JSC), quashed the aspect of his conviction over criminal misappropriation, but that was not sufficient to let him off the hook.
The offences for which he was discharged only attracted two-year jail term out of the 14-year handed him by the lower court. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction in respect of criminal breach of trust, which attracted a 10-year jail term.
In his reaction, Professor Soyinka said President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to grant a presidential pardon to former governors Dariye and Nyame showed that the Buhari administration’s anti-corruption fight was over. He likened the state pardon to an egg smashed against the faces of Nigerians, saying it would take a long time to wipe it off.
Speaking Monday at the Inaugural Public Lecture of Department of Public and International Law, Faculty of Law, Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo, Oyo state, Falana said some personalities in the society seemed to be “untouchable, since they have the money, they can influence and manipulate the justice system in their favour.”
In his paper titled, “Sentencing Rich and Poor Convicts In Nigeria: An Unbalanced Scale,” Falana identified the dysfunctional justice system operated by Nigerian courts as the main problem with the justice system.
He said, “Owing to the class character of the society, the courts and law enforcement agencies tend to favour rich convicts against poor convicts. This problem has caused the public to lose hope and trust in the country’s judicial system.”
The lawyer stated that drastic “steps must be taken to address the issue of disparity in sentencing, to ensure justice, fairness, and equality before the law, for all convicts.”
SERAP, specifically, asked Buhari to urgently withdraw the pardon.
Notwithstanding the misgivings of some eminent Nigerians on the pardon granted Dariye and Nyame, barely four years into their jail terms, President Buhari must be accorded the right to the exercise of his constitutional powers of the grant of the prerogative of mercy. It is safe, however, to assume that the president may have been persuaded to act in the interest of national unity and cohesion.
This assertion can be gleaned from the fact that Dariye and Nyame may have been victims of circumstances. In a country where official corruption knows no bounds, it is illogical, inequitable and quite inexplicable that only two of 36 governors could be convicted for corruption. Nigerians ought to see the wisdom in the presidential pardon rather than outright condemnation
