Death penalty for corruption

Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President Ayuba Waba recently suggested the death penalty for corrupt public officers to curb corruption in Nigeria.
If capital punishment is introduced and worked elsewhere to eliminate corruption, then we are for it,’’ he said at a rally to support the anti-corruption fight of President Muhammadu Buhari.
However, Professor of Criminology, Femi Odekunle, observed that death penalty could not be enough measure to curb corruption.
According to him, someone who is dead does not know anything and will not feel the pulse of the punishment.
He said that the death penalty for corruption would only relieve those who are to face the punishment of their guilt.
Let them serve 30 years in prison with hard labour to serve as the consequence of their offence; this is the only way corrupt people will bear the burden of their corruption and not through death sentence,’’ he said.
In his view, Mr Peter Ameh, the National Chairman of Progressive People’s Alliance, noted that although corruption had become endemic in Nigeria, the death penalty might not be the only solution to stop it.
Death penalty cannot prevent people from stealing or from being corrupt, to curb corruption in the country, everybody will have to work to create a society where people’s rights will be protected,’’ he said.
He urged Nigerians to have a change of attitude, insisting that nothing could be done to address the issue of corruption without attitudinal change.
Nigerian Bar Association President Augustine Alegeh, in his view, observed that while other countries were moving away from capital punishment, Nigeria should not be drifting towards such outdated law.
He noted that government should evolve pragmatic measures to prevent people from looting the treasury.
The Treasury Single Account is a good measure in the right direction that will curb the menace of corruption.
The international trend is that every country is moving away from capital punishment. So, where the world is moving away from, why are we going there?
In corruption cases, the focus is on recovering the money. Let us recover that money and use it to develop our country and not to kill the man.
Because, if you kill the man and his family members have the money, have we made any progress? So, let us go for what is right,’’ he said.
Sharing similar sentiments, Mr Wahab Shittu, a Lagos-based lawyer, said fighting corruption effectively would involve sentencing corrupt public officers to long-term imprisonment.
I don’t agree that the consequences of looting should be death penalty, but there should rather be long prison terms for corruption, at least a period of not less than 25 years, plus the forfeiture of the proceeds of corruption.
The punishment should not be such that a corrupt person is now deprived the right of existence.
Once someone dies, he’s gone and would not even be alive to witness the consequences of his action,’’ he said.
In the same vein, Mr Adetokunbo Mumuni, Executive Director of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, a non-governmental organisation, noted that although corruption was a serious crime, recovery of loot rather than death penalty should be emphasised.
He stressed that the death penalty would not help to stem the tide of corruption in the country, adding that he had remained an advocate of the abolition of death penalty for all kinds of offences.
Mumuni, however, suggested that the government should concentrate on loot recovery and ensure that anyone found guilty of any corruption cases should forfeit all his ill-gotten wealth.
Similarly, Mr Olabode Towoju, a Chieftain of the All Progressives Party, said that death penalty for corrupt officials was no longer popular globally.
According to him, Nigeria has not developed to the level where it can use the death penalty as punishment for corruption as most public officers are still involved in the politics of bitterness.
Anyone found to be corrupt should be compelled to forfeit his or her assets and should not be allowed to hold public office again,’’ he said.
Towoju called for the strengthening of the relevant anti-corruption agencies in the country and laws that would prohibit any corrupt practices.
He said that no amount of offence would worth sending someone to death because such person can come out to be useful to the country after rehabilitation and reorientation.
No one can make or create life except God, so killing anyone because of corruption which can be tackled by relevant law is amounting to usurping the power of God,’’ he observed.
By and large, concerned citizens observe that although death penalty may dissuade potential corrupt officials from engaging in corrupt practices, it may not be adequate to end corruption.
They, therefore, urge that the government to provide basic infrastructure, good welfare package, good salary for its workers and make living meaningful for Nigerians, among others, to effectively tackle corruption.

Policeman shoots driver to death in Ogun

A police corporal in Ogun State, whose identity has not been revealed by the state police  command, on Tuesday, shot dead a commercial vehicle driver identified as Likinyo Olumide at the Sagamu Tollgate area along the Lagos-Benin Expressway.
The driver was conveying seven passengers and their goods from Lagos to Okitipupa in Ondo State, when the tragic occurrence happened.
One of the seven passengers, who witnessed the killing, Folake  Egbeuwalo, said some policemen, who were around the tollgate area, had stopped the vehicle and the driver promptly parked by the road side.
For reasons which the passengers claimed not to have known, the corporal shot the driver where he was standing beside his vehicle, killing him on the spot.
The Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, said the corporal had been arrested.
Our correspondent gathered that the 42-year-old driver was survived by six children and a pregnant wife.
Egbeuwalo, who spoke with journalists at the Police Headquarters,  Eleweran, Abeokuta, on  Wednesday, said the incident occured at 9.45pm on Tuesday, as they were coming from Lagos, where they went to buy some goods and  heading back for Okitipupa in Ondo  State.
She said, “The late driver  was our permanent driver, he used to carry us from Okitipupa to Lagos. So, the man carried us from Idumagbo on Lagos Island. As we were coming,  we met many policemen and soldiers on the road,  we stopped and settled them.
“When we got to Sagamu Tollgate, we did not know that there were policemen on the road; they asked the driver to park and immediately he parked.
“As the driver came down from the vehicle, he stood beside the vehicle and the policeman moved to the other side of the road and shot him dead.”
Egbeuwalo added that the policeman and his colleagues, realising what had happened, fled the area immediately, but came back a few minutes later and took away the corpse in one of the Hilux vans with number plate NPF 104 OD.
She, however, lamented that all the passengers were abandoned and slept on the highway as none of them could  drive the car after the death of the driver.
A younger brother of the late driver, Likinyo Solomon, lamented the death of his deceased,  who he said was survived by six children and a pregnant wife.
He said, “I demand  to see the person that killed my brother and to know what actually happened before he was killed.”
During his visit to Ogun State on Wednesday,  the Assistant Inspector- General of Police, Zone 2 , Balade Hassan,   said the policeman would face the wrath  of the  law.
He said, “The regulation is clear and the constitution is clear about the right to life of all Nigerians. So, if anybody takes the life of anybody, be it a policeman or civilian, not as provided by the constitution, that person will face the full wrath of the law.
“You know the present Inspector-General of Police and previous IGs do  not take things lightly when things like that go wrong.
“You would recall that something like this happened in Lagos, the policeman was arrested, tried, dismissed from the force and arraigned in less than 24 hours after the incident.
“The police is trying to say anyone who flouts the rules and regulation, will get his case in court as the case may be.
“This case is not an exception from other cases. The person would be tried as prescribed by the law, after finding him guilty, he would be dismissed and charged to court.”
Adejobi, on his own part, said the command had arrested the killer cop

South African King Dalindyebo jailed for 12 years

South African King Shobizz Blog

A South African king has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for a series of charges including kidnapping, assault and arson.

Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, from Nelson Mandela’s Thembu ethnic group, was jailed by the Supreme Court of Appeals.

He had approached the SCA to overturn a 2009 court ruling on the matter, which had sentenced him to 15 years.

The charges relate to a dispute he had with some of his subjects more than two decades ago.

He was accused of kidnapping a woman and her six children, setting their home on fire and beating up four youths, one of whom died, because one of their relatives had failed to present himself before the kings’s traditional court.
The king has never denied the charges but believed his actions were in line with disciplining his subjects, reports say.
In Bloemfontein in the Free State Province, a panel of judges looked at his case in August and the evidence presented before sentencing.
The Eastern Cape High Court had sentenced him to 15 years for the charges, along with one of culpable homicide, which has since been dropped.