Falana: Remi Tinubu’s Comment on Capital Punishment Diversionary to Real Issues

•Says over 3,000 inmates on death row

•Wants unaccounted N1.3bn for Chibok cause revisited

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

Lawyer and human rights activist, Femi Falana, SAN, has said capital punishment could never address the root causes of insecurity and related crimes in the country.

He said so far, a law existed in Nigeria, where life imprisonment awaited anyone convicted of embezzlement to the tune of one million naira, which the government and its anti-graft agencies had refused to apply despite the promptings of people in the know of jurisprudence.

Reacting to the comment and suggestion accredited to the first lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, on ending the menace of kidnappings in the country, Falana said Nigerians would rather prefer capital punishment for embezzlers of the nation’s common wealth and other forms of corruption.

Falana, who stated this at a meeting organised by Women Radio in commemoration of 10 years of the abduction of 279 Chibok girls from their school, said the case of the sum of N1.3b that was released by the federal government to the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs in order to alleviate the plight of the released girls and their parents, needed to be revisited.

He noted that such would arouse the interest of Nigerians into the case of the mismanagement of the funds and would mount pressure on the government to look out for the remaining missing girls.

“I do not subscribe to any form of capital punishment because it has never addressed the root causes of the problems. In 1970, Nigeria began the execution of convicted armed robbers.

“Since then, armed robbery, kidnapping and killings by so-called unknown gun men have been on ascendancy. In other words, it is not capital punishment that will address this problem.

“For me, it is a diversionary statement and other Nigerians will preference that we recommend capital punishment for criminalities to other forms of corruption.

“Those advocating such will not want capital punishment to be extended to those that loot the treasury, sometimes to the rune of 100 billion naira.

“Secondly, the alleged mismanagement of the over one billion naira set aside by the government to alleviate the suffering of the parents as well as the students. It’s important to us and with this, we can draw the attention of the government to this aspect.

“There is a law in Nigeria that prescribes life imprisonment for anybody who steals more than one million naira. I have tried to get the anti-graft agencies  to apply this law, but the governor is not interested.”