Abolish Death sentence in Nigeria – Okowa charges FG

Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa has charged the Federal Government to abolish death sentence in Nigeria reportswww.totorinews.com

Okowa made the call on Thursday  in Asaba when he received members of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Prerogative of Mercy led by Mr. William Alo.

“Nigeria is a major player in the International community. We need to ask ourselves if death sentence is still relevant in our society? In many states, many Governors are not ready to sign the death warrant, why are they not signing the death warrant? The world is moving away from death sentence.” Okowa said.

He decried the overpopulation of Nigerian prisons and urged the Federal Government to improve on the facilities in the prisons.

“We need to evolve measures that will make Nigerian Prisons reformation centres, so that ex-convicts can be better citizens”. he said

“There is no doubt that most of our prisons are crowded, even in Delta State; there is therefore a need to have reforms that will change the mind of the prisoners for them to be useful to the society; I pray that the committee keeps this advocacy on what to do to carry out reforms to make prisoners come out as better persons,” he said.

“We need to make them see life differently and acquire skills to live a better life after imprisonment. We need to have a total rethink to carry out a total reformation of prisoners because if we reform their lives and we did not provide skills, many of them will return to the life of crime.” he said.

Mr Alo had earlier said they were on advocacy visit to prisons in the state and that it was important for suggestions to be made on how to improve on the services in the Nigerian Prisons.