The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Australian Government have urged Nigeria to formalize its decade-long pause on executions, as over 3,500 inmates remain on death row. This call was made on Friday in Abuja at the commemoration of the 2026 World Day Against the Death Penalty. The event, themed "Stories for Life," was organized by the NHRC, Avocats Sans Frontières (ASF) France, the Australian High Commission, and the German Embassy, with support from the Royal Norwegian Embassy.
Australia's High Commissioner to Nigeria, Ms Leilani Bin-Juda, aligned with the NHRC's position and reaffirmed her country's opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances. She encouraged Nigeria to use its approaching 10-year milestone without executions as an opportunity for broader legal and institutional reforms. Bin-Juda warned that the presence of over 3,500 people on death row shows that the human consequences of capital punishment remain unresolved, even without executions.
The NHRC's Executive Secretary, Tony Ojukwu, SAN, noted that Nigeria will attain ten consecutive years without a state execution by December 2026, meeting the international standard for a de facto moratorium. However, he expressed concern that mandatory death sentencing continues, leaving over 3,000 people on prolonged death row detention. Ojukwu listed inadequate pro bono defense, forced confessions, and pre-trial delays as systemic problems undermining procedural justice.
Ojukwu described capital punishment under Nigerian law as a constitutional duality, citing Section 33(1) of the 1999 Constitution, which protects the right to life, and Section 34(1)(a), which guarantees human dignity and protection from inhuman or degrading treatment. He recalled that the Supreme Court affirmed the validity of the death penalty in Onuoha Kalu v. The State (1998) and reaffirmed it in Joseph Amoshima v. The State (2011).
Despite Nigeria not being a party to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Ojukwu stated that the country remains bound by Article 6 of the ICCPR and Article 4 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. These require strict adherence to due process and limit capital punishment to the most serious crimes.
The NHRC has called for three immediate steps: converting Nigeria's 10-year pause into an official executive moratorium on executions; state governors systematically invoking Section 212 of the Constitution and Section 12(2)(c) of the Nigerian Correctional Service Act, 2019, to commute death sentences to life imprisonment; and a re-evaluation of mandatory death penalty statutes. Ojukwu thanked partners for their support and expressed hope that the day's deliberations would produce a Joint Call to Action Communiqué to drive justice sector reform.
Bin-Juda cited an earlier Federal High Court decision in which a judge declined to impose a death sentence, describing it as an indication of the evolving judicial and international debate on capital punishment. She urged the authorities to formalize the moratorium and, pending wider reforms, reduce the range of offenses punishable by death, emphasizing that justice, accountability, and public safety can be achieved without taking human lives.
Key points
- The NHRC and Australia have called on Nigeria to formalize its decade-long pause on executions.
- Over 3,500 inmates remain on death row in Nigeria.
- The NHRC has proposed three immediate steps to reform the death penalty system in Nigeria.
