EDITORIAL: Death Penalty for Corrupt Office Holders

The recent call by the Oluwo of Iwo, His Imperial Majesty Abdulrasheed Adewale Akanbi that corrupt office holders should be given death penalty may have come as great news in the media space.

However, the truth is that this is not the first time the Iwo monarch would advocate death penalty for primitive accumulators in Nigeria.

It is on record that the iconic king who spoke at the Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria (CRAN) annual lecture/award on Thursday in Lagos had taken similar position about three years ago at the same annual CRAN lecture.

That His Imperial Majesty could repeatedly make such appeal or demand on the leadership of the country clearly bears testimony to our Editorial comment of last week which dwelt so much on “Primitive Accumulation” as the bane of Nigeria’s society.

It is very obvious that the Oluwo was not mincing words in his condemnation of anything satanic in public space.

The Oluwo’s argument to many Nigerians is the best way to go if Nigeria will ever be free from those who are on a mission to ruin the society to their own advantage. Though globally speaking, death penalty for capital offences and corrupt practices has received so much criticisms in some countries, yet in China and many other Asian countries, death penalty has remained in vogue and such countries are not contemplating of abrogating it any time soon because of the obvious sanity it has brought to their governance system.

With respect to Nigeria, death penalty for corrupt officials of state has been canvassed at different times but not with the vehemence it ought to have been debated because the so called rights activists in our midst would always want to see it as archaic, barbaric and not universally accepted.

They have therefore, had occasion to oppose any attempt to bring such proposition for legislative debate. Majority of the lawmakers themselves do not even want to take interest in debating any such proposal by way of Bill or motion as they could easily fall victim of such law.

The extant laws guiding the offence of corrupt enrichment in Nigeria and prosecution of offending public officers has not been encouraging as the primitive accumulators have largely gotten away with corruptly acquired wealth or at best engaged in plea bargain that leaves the accumulators in an over pampered state.

The question any patriotic Nigerian should always ask is: how long shall we continue to tolerate those who are inflicting economic injuries on us through their ignoble acquisition tendencies? How long shall we stand to celebrate those who selfishly stash away billions from our collective coffers only to employ Senior Advocates of Nigeria to engage the anti-graft institutions in judicial gymnastics that assure an endless adjournment of cases with ultimate intention of scuttling the entire process?

How long shall we continue to wait for God to fight for us when the primitive accumulators turn around to brazenly display oppressive tendencies using the same stolen wealth to intimidate anyone who dares to challenge their ill gotten wealth?

Before the preachers in our midst would join the so-called activists who are eternally opposed to death penalty for corrupt practices, let us carefully consider the number of Nigerians dying daily as a result of poverty and hardship caused by lack in the midst of plenty.

On records, we have a good number of Nigerians who have committed suicide in recent time due to hopelessness and helplessness in the economy.

Many Nigerian families cannot feed normally due to joblessness and lack of economic assistance to fend for themselves despite the brazen display of ostentatious life style by the primitive accumulators around them.

Since the criminal justice administration in Nigeria is run with certain belief that the more money one has legitimately or illegitimately acquired from the system, the greater chances of receiving punishment for offences against the State, we have cases where the less privileged are over punished because they do not have the wherewithal to ‘buy’ justice.

Nigeria is a country where a thief who stole telephone handset worth less than half a million naira belonging to a Governor (now former) of a Southwest state was sentenced to over fifteen years imprisonment whereas the former Chairman of Pension Reform Task Force team AbdulRahman Maina was sentenced to a paltry eight years imprisonment for stealing billions of naira. What an injustice to the less privileged?

securityreporters.com is therefore fully backing the Oluwo of Iwo in his call for death penalty for corrupt officials.  Let us emulate the China example and move Nigeria on the path of sanity.  Those who are afraid of death sentence should stay away from primitive accumulation. Simple.