Ex-UN Envoy Faults Nigeria’s Senate On Death Penalty For Terrorists, Kidnappers

Professor Uchenna Emelonye, a renowned human rights scholar at Bournemouth University UK and former United Nations Senior Human Rights Envoy, has strongly criticized the Nigerian Senate’s move to amend the Anti-Terrorism (Prevention) Act to impose the death penalty for kidnapping and related offences, warning that the proposal contradicts Nigeria’s international human rights commitments and undermines global normative standards.

Prof. Emelonye noted that the proposal runs counter to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) ratified by Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1993 and the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, the world’s primary instrument advocating for the abolition of capital punishment. Although Nigeria has not ratified the Optional Protocol, it remains bound by the ICCPR’s restrictive standards on the use of the death penalty.

“Expanding the death penalty is a regressive, ineffective, and legally questionable response to kidnapping,” Prof. Emelonye stated. “This amendment places Nigeria in direct conflict with international human rights jurisprudence and threatens to reverse decades of global progress toward ending capital punishment.”

Arguing that death penalty does not deter crime, Prof. Emelonye emphasized that there is no credible evidence that capital punishment deters kidnapping or violent crime. “Nigeria cannot hope to deter crime through executions. What is needed is investment in policing, intelligence, and justice-sector reforms—not a return to punitive excesses.

“There is plethora of evidence to show that the “error rates” in Nigeria’s criminal justice system is very high. So, while the country continues to struggle with torture-based confessions, inadequate investigations, and limited legal representation, expanding capital punishment in such a context increases the danger of wrongful executions and the risk of irrevocable miscarriages of justice, in violation of the ICCPR’s due-process guarantees.”

“The Senate proposal to reintroduce death penalty into our body of laws would set Nigeria’s trajectory backwards and place it among the retentionist jurisdictions where capital punishment remains entrenched, rather than aligning with the growing global abolitionist consensus on human rights-based justice systems.”

“African countries that have abolished the death penalty, including Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, and the Central African Republic are not experiencing higher levels of kidnapping, demonstrating that abolition does not fuel violent crime and that capital punishment offers no meaningful deterrent effect.”

Emelonye urged members of the Nigerian National Assembly to reconsider the proposed amendment and instead pursue rights-centric, effective, and evidence-based strategies to address kidnapping—such as enhanced community policing, targeted socio-economic interventions, strengthened criminal-justice institutions, and decisive action to curb the proliferation of small arms and ammunition that continues to fuel insecurity across the country.