NIGERIA: KOGI INDIGENE GETS STATE PARDON AFTER 18 YEARS IN DEATH ROW

April 11, 2014: Kogi governor, Captain Idris Wada, has granted amnesty to Mr Lasisi Yusuf, a 67-year-old convict who has been on death row in Kaduna for nearly 18 years, according to a statement by Avocats Sans Frontieres, a French human rights advocacy organisation.
The statement, signed by ASF communications officer Esther Eloeojo, said Lasisi, a Kogi indigene was arrested over charges of culpable homicide and was sentenced to death in 1996 by a Kogi High Court.
He was transferred to Kaduna prisons in 1997 and has been on death row ever since.
“Mr. Lasisi’s case was taken up by ASF France through the medium of its Saving Lives project, which is targeted at promoting international standards on human rights in Nigeria generally and, the restrictive pronouncement of capital punishment and abolition of death penalty specifically,” the statement said.
According to the statement, other detainees who have been freed from almost indefinite incarceration owing to the legal intervention of ASF France include Zuwaira Tukur, Fatima Haruna and Mohammed Isyaku, who were all charged with capital offences in Kaduna.
According to available figures, in 2013 alone, over 140 death sentences were handed down in Nigeria, bringing the total number of inmates on death row to approximately 1,200. (Sources: ynaija.com, 11/04/2014)