Over 4,300 inmates await execution as Nigerian courts punish Christian self-defenders while fast-tracking violent extremists through government rehabilitation.
By Mary Kiara
ABUJA, Nigeria – As Nigeria marked the World Day Against the Death Penalty in Abuja, human rights advocates exposed a glaring double standard: courts relentlessly send Civilians to death row while the state rehabilitates terrorists.
With over 4,300 inmates languishing in an overpopulated penal system, the National Human Rights Commission NHRC urged Abuja to formalize a moratorium on capital punishment, sparking intense scrutiny over a selective justice system that punishes victims of terror.
“The commission urges the government to systematically revoke Section 312 of the Constitution and Section 122 of the Nigeria Correctional Service Act to commute death sentences to life imprisonment,” Tony Ojukwu, the NHRC’s executive secretary told reporters.
In March 2026, TruthNigeria reported the Nigerian military’s graduation of 117 Islamist fighters from a government rehabilitation program, even as millions of terror survivors remain stranded in squalid displacement camps without recovery support.
“Capital punishment in Nigeria is discriminatory because it targets the weakest in our society and is disproportionately applied to impoverished defendants lacking adequate legal defense,” Angela Uwandu Uzoma-Iwuchukwu, Country Head of Avocats Sans Frontières France told TruthNigeria.
The Criminalization of Civilian Self-Defense
Nowhere is this discriminatory legal weaponization more evident than in the historic travails of Sunday Jackson, an Adamawa State farmer who spent years on death row simply for surviving an unprovoked invasion.
Trapped in an isolated area and bleeding from a severe leg wound inflicted by an armed Fulani militant, Jackson fought for his life. In a desperate grapple, he wrested the weapon away and struck back, neutralizing his assailant.
Despite acting in clear self-defense, Jackson was condemned to hang, narrowly escaping execution with a Christmas Eve 2025 pardon by Governor Ahmadu Fintiri, following interventions from U.S. Rep. Riley Moore.
“The government cannot protect Christians from being killed, but when they defend themselves, you will kill them and finish off the job of the Muslim attacker,” legal defenders who worked on Jackson’s case told TruthNigeria.
Renowned Senior Advocate of Nigeria Mike Ozekhome noted that the judiciary’s refusal to acknowledge the realities of rural violence distorts basic justice.
“The court ought to have appreciated that Jackson, being part of a vulnerable and frequently targeted farming community, would have reasonably perceived any sudden attack from a known herder as a mortal threat,” Ozekhome observed.
Weaponizing the Law against Christian Communities
While self-defenders face the gallows, minor religious and social disputes involving Christian minorities are met with maximum penal severity.
This judicial disparity was highlighted by the shock conviction of Lami Samuel Dawa, a Christian mother and displaced person from Gwoza County in Borno State.
Sentenced by Borno High Court Judge A.B. Kumalia to an astonishing 38 years imprisonment, Dawa was targeted after sharing her faith with an adult Muslim woman.
Court records and human rights investigations revealed that the adult woman involved testified voluntarily in court that nobody forced or persuaded her to convert to Christianity, yet the prosecution and judiciary pursued maximum punitive penalties.
According to defense accounts, the local Divisional Police Officer (DPO) initially investigated the case and discharged Dawa after finding her entirely innocent of any crime. However, command leadership, allegedly bowing to external pressure, ordered her re-arrest.
“When you compare these files, the tension becomes obvious,” Samuel John, a human rights attorney, told TruthNigeria.
“A Christian mother receives the maximum sentence. Yet, dangerous criminal elements and insurgents are systematically fast-tracked through rehabilitation programs and reintegrated into the very communities they terrorized.”
“The law is being heavily weaponized against minor social infractions while failing to curb major atrocities.”
Adding to the family’s profound trauma, defense advocates reported that armed elements from state-backed “repentant Boko Haram” networks subsequently targeted Dawa’s home in an assassination attempt, forcing her husband, Suleman, into hiding.
The Architecture of Impunity
The state’s obsession with rehabilitating captured jihadists while crushing civilian victims is rooted in decades of compromised security policy.
Declassified diplomatic cables, including a 2008 U.S. State Department record, (08ABUJA538) from then-Ambassador Robin Renee Sanders highlighted early state security programs that funneled extremism suspects to traditional leaders and imams under the guise of “perception management,” bypassing formal prosecution and institutionalizing impunity.
“This approach allows suspects who may have planned attacks to avoid judicial process,” US Ambassador Sanders warned.
“Lack of prosecution creates impunity.”
Nearly two decades later, civil society watchdogs warn that these grandfathered policies continue to shield “former” insurgents on state payrolls, while leaving Christian farming communities completely unprotected.
As international lawmakers and religious freedom monitors review Nigeria’s human rights compliance, human rights advocates insist that true penal reform requires more than emptying death row, it demands an immediate end to the state’s selective justice
Mary Kiara reports on terrorism, human rights, and religious freedom policy for TruthNigeria.
