Convict on death row for 18yrs gets Gov Idris amnesty
By Olorunfemi Ojo
Kogi state governor, Captain Idris Wada (rtd), according to a statement by Avocats Sans Frontieres, a French human rights advocacy organisation has granted amnesty to Mr Lasisi Yusuf, a 67-year-old convict who has been on death row in Kaduna for nearly 18 years.
In the statement, signed by ASF communications officer, Esther Eloeojo, Lasisi Yusuff, a Kogi indigene was arrested over charges of culpable homicide and was sentenced to death in 1996 by a Kogi High Court. In 1996 he was transferred to Kaduna prisons and has been on death row ever since.
“Mr. Lasisi’s case was taken up by ASF France through the medium of its Saving Lives project, which is targeted at promoting international standards on human rights in Nigeria generally and, the restrictive pronouncement of capital punishment and abolition of death penalty specifically,” the statement said.
The statement also revealed that, other detainees who have been freed from almost indefinite incarceration owing to the legal intervention of ASF France include Zuwaira Tukur, Fatima Haruna and Mohammed Isyaku, who were all charged with capital offences in Kaduna.
Available figures in the statement show that, in 2013 alone, over 140 death sentences were handed down in Nigeria, bringing the total number of inmates on death row to approximately 1,200
