President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s
commitment to justice reform, compassion, and correction of historical wrongs necessitated the release, pardon, or sentence reduction of 175 convicts and former convicts across the country, following recommendations by the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, chaired by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN).
In a statement by the president’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, among those granted mercy are Major-General Mamman Jiya Vatsa, Professor Magaji Garba, Maryam Sanda, and Major S.A. Akubo, as well as several remorseful drug offenders, illegal miners, and white-collar convicts.
He added that President Tinubu also granted posthumous pardons to Nigeria’s nationalist Sir Herbert Macaulay, and the Ogoniland environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa alongside the other eight members of the Ogonis Nine, executed in 1995. Their victims—Chief Albert Badey, Chief Edward Kobaru, Chief Samuel Orage, and Chief Theophilus Orage—were also formally honoured.
According to the report presented at the Council of State meeting, the President pardoned two inmates and 15 former convicts (11 posthumously), granted clemency to 82 inmates, commuted the death sentences of seven inmates to life imprisonment, and reduced prison terms for 65 others based on good conduct, remorse, age, ill health, or participation in rehabilitation and educational programmes such as the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).
The list includes remorseful drug traffickers, illegal miners, and inmates convicted for offences such as fraud, armed robbery, and homicide. Notably, Maryam Sanda, convicted for the murder of her husband in 2020, was granted clemency after serving over six years in prison, following appeals citing her good conduct and responsibilities to her two children.
