When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu appended his signature to the list of 175 Nigerians granted presidential clemency, the Presidency called it “an act of compassion, justice, and national healing.” But what followed has been anything but healing. From civil society groups to opposition parties, lawyers, and human rights advocates, the outrage has been swift, scathing, and near-universal.
Among those pardoned were names that reignited national trauma, convicted drug barons, murderers, and even a once-feared kidnap kingpin. To many Nigerians, the gesture symbolized not compassion but the collapse of moral order under the guise of mercy.
A Presidential Mercy That Divided the Nation
The list of beneficiaries, approved by the Council of State and announced by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), included both deceased and living convicts. While posthumous pardons for the late environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni Eight, and Major-General Mamman Vatsa were widely applauded, the inclusion of notorious convicts such as Maryam Sanda; sentenced for killing her husband and dozens of drug traffickers stunned the country.
But the outrage reached fever pitch when revelations emerged that Kelvin Prosper Oniarah, the infamous Delta kidnap kingpin once linked to the abductions of human rights lawyer Mike Ozekhome (SAN) and former Anambra Deputy Governor Chudi Nwike, was among those quietly freed.
Kelvin’s release, according to reports, in the early 2010s, his gang terrorised the South-South, kidnapping and killing at will. His 2013 arrest by the DSS was celebrated as a rare triumph of law enforcement. To see his name now among those forgiven by the presidential fiat has left many Nigerians in disbelief.
“What message does this send to victims of his crimes?” asked one senior police officer who participated in the 2013 raid that captured Kelvin. “That after all our sacrifices, justice can be undone overnight?”
The Law and Its Limits
Section 175 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) grants the President the “prerogative of mercy”, the power to pardon, commute, or remit sentences. It is a noble provision meant to temper justice with compassion, recognizing that even convicts deserve redemption.
But human rights lawyer Inibehe Effiong argues that Tinubu’s latest exercise of that power betrays its moral intent.
“My perception is that this pardon is basically going to embolden criminality in the country,” Effiong said on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief. “Yes, the President has constitutional power to issue pardons, but it must be exercised with discretion. When you forgive convicted murderers and drug traffickers, you delegitimize the entire justice system.”
Effiong questioned the basis on which several convicts were selected for clemency. “How can you pardon someone like Maryam Sanda, who stabbed her husband multiple times and was found guilty after a lengthy trial, in the name of compassion? What becomes of the family of the man she killed?”
He added that the argument of “rehabilitation” being peddled by the government was hollow. “There’s hardly anything correctional about the Nigerian Correctional Service,” he said. “Most inmates come out more hardened. To claim they’ve been reformed simply because they enrolled in the National Open University is disingenuous.”
‘An Unprecedented National Disgrace’
The strongest condemnation came from Senator Dino Melaye, a lawyer and former lawmaker, who described the pardon as “an unprecedented national disgrace” and “a reckless betrayal of public trust.”
In a detailed essay titled “The Prerogative of Mercy and the Boundaries of Discretion,” Melaye accused the President of undermining years of work by anti-drug agencies, especially the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
“Pardoning 70 convicted drug lords is unprecedented in history,” Melaye wrote. “It has never happened anywhere in the world. My advice to the President is to scrap the NDLEA, because his action has made a beautiful nonsense of all its efforts since inception.”
He warned that the decision endangered NDLEA operatives, prosecutors, and judges who risked their lives securing convictions. “By freeing convicted drug barons, the government has effectively compromised the security of these officers,” he argued. “Their families now live under the shadow of fear, knowing those they helped jail are back on the streets, bitter and armed with presidential forgiveness.”
Beyond domestic consequences, Melaye noted that the pardon damages Nigeria’s international credibility. “It tells the world Nigeria now pardons what the rest of the world punishes,” he wrote. “It sends a dangerous signal to global partners that we have become unreliable in the war against drugs.”
ADC: ‘Tinubu Has Trivialized Justice’
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) also condemned the mass pardon, calling it a “national disgrace that emboldens criminality.”
In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party accused the Tinubu administration of abusing the constitutional prerogative of mercy.
“It amounts to a most irresponsible abuse of power to grant express pardon to dozens of convicts held for drug trafficking, smuggling, and related offences, especially when many of them have barely served two years in jail for crimes that carry life imprisonment,” the ADC said.
The party argued that the move trivializes narcotics offences at a time when Nigeria’s drug abuse rate, at 14.4 percent, is almost three times the global average of 5.5 percent.
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“For the avoidance of doubt, Nigeria remains a major transit point for illicit drugs,” Abdullahi noted. “Granting clemency to convicted drug traffickers strikes at the very foundation of our legal and moral stance against narcotics.”
The ADC said Tinubu’s decision disrespects the sacrifices of law enforcement agents and “redefines the standard of morality in the country.”
“With this mass clemency for drug dealers, President Tinubu and the APC are transforming Nigeria into a country where anything goes — where even the worst of crimes attract no punishment beyond a few months of inconvenience,” the statement added.
Atiku: Mercy Without Morality
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar joined the chorus of critics, describing the presidential pardon as “reckless” and “morally indefensible.”
In a statement shared through his X account, Atiku said, “Ordinarily, the power of presidential pardon is a solemn prerogative, a moral and constitutional instrument designed to temper justice with mercy. When properly exercised, it elevates justice and strengthens public faith in governance.”
He lamented that Tinubu’s action “has done the very opposite,” accusing the administration of diminishing the sanctity of justice.
“At a time when Nigeria is reeling from insecurity, moral decay, and a surge in drug-related offences, it is shocking that the presidency would prioritize clemency for those whose actions have directly undermined national stability,” Atiku said.
He described as “particularly worrisome” the revelation that nearly one-third of those pardoned were convicted of drug trafficking.
“It is no surprise,” he added pointedly, “that this act of clemency comes from a President whose own past remains clouded by unresolved issues relating to the forfeiture of thousands of dollars to the U.S. government over drug-related investigations.”
Mercy or Moral Collapse?
For many Nigerians, the question is not whether the President can grant a pardon — but whether he should have.
Constitutional experts agree that the prerogative of mercy is one of the few presidential powers that cannot be challenged in court. Yet, as several commentators have observed, legality does not equate to legitimacy.
In practice, every pardon carries a moral message: that society forgives, that rehabilitation is possible, and that justice has been tempered by mercy. But when the beneficiaries are drug lords, kidnappers, and convicted murderers, mercy begins to look less like compassion and more like complicity.
Civil society organisations like the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) have demanded that the government review the clemency list and disclose the criteria used. “We are dealing with a dangerous precedent,” one HURIWA spokesperson said. “If notorious criminals can be pardoned for vague reasons like ‘good conduct,’ then we have replaced justice with sentiment.”
Even among supporters of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), there are murmurs of discomfort. Some insiders reportedly question the political wisdom of freeing controversial figures amid rising insecurity and economic hardship.
The Politics of Forgiveness
Some Nigerians note that presidential pardons in Nigeria have often carried political undertones. From Goodluck Jonathan’s 2013 pardon of former Bayelsa Governor, the late DSP Alamieyeseigha, and Muhammadu Buhari’s 2022 clemency for Joshua Dariye and Jolly Nyame, the line between mercy and political expediency has always been thin.
But Tinubu’s latest gesture, critics say, crosses into new territory — both in scale and symbolism. By freeing figures associated with drug trafficking and violent crimes, the administration risks reinforcing perceptions that the rule of law is negotiable for the powerful or well-connected.
“The message to the average Nigerian is simple,” said a senior Lagos-based lawyer. “If you are poor and steal to eat, the law will crush you. But if you traffic cocaine or finance illegal mining, the state will find a way to forgive you — perhaps even celebrate you.”
A Nation at the Crossroads
Every pardon carries consequences beyond the courtroom. For victims and their families, it reopens wounds. For law enforcement, it erodes morale. For the justice system, it blurs the line between mercy and miscarriage.
“Mercy must never be confused with moral blindness,” said Melaye in his essay. “When a government begins to absolve offenders of the very crimes it claims to be fighting, it erodes the moral authority of leadership and emboldens lawlessness.”
For now, President Tinubu remains silent amid the backlash. His aides insist that the clemency exercise followed due process, guided by recommendations from the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy. But for millions of Nigerians, that explanation is cold comfort in a country where justice often feels elusive.
In the end, perhaps the greatest irony of this pardon is not who was freed — but who remains behind bars. In overcrowded Nigerian prisons, thousands of petty offenders and awaiting-trial inmates languish for years without hope or hearing. They are the poor, the voiceless, and the forgotten — the ones mercy was meant for.
If forgiveness has become a privilege reserved for the powerful, then the nation must ask: when did wrong become right?
