President on Media and Publicity, yesterday explained on Channels Television
how President Jonathan granted former Bayelsa State Governor Alamieseyeigha
state pardon last Tuesday. Excerpts:
of ignorance about what has happened. And sophisticated ignorance, but I
respect the fact that part of our duties is to continue to explain to people.
The first thing to note is what state pardon is not. One, a state pardon does
not mean that an individual was not convicted at a particular time. In fact, a
state pardon means that you have been convicted for a particular crime, you
have been punished, then within the view of the constitution means a
forgiveness of what you have done, and an opportunity to give you a chance to
be reformed to reintegrate back into society.
So a man who has been given a state pardon, the fact still remains that this
particular person has been convicted of a crime and served the punishment, but
the state then has granted this pardon, which restores corporal rights. What do
I mean by corporal rights? It simply means that that person has been
reintegrated into society. And there’s a jurisprudential point about the issues
of crime and punishment. What is the purpose of punishment in relation to
crime? Right to punish the individual to create deterrence, and in modern
jurisprudence, it’s to provide an opportunity for such persons to be
reintegrated to the society.
You then ask the question, ‘how are those persons selected?’ It varies from one
country to the other. And almost every country has its own provisions. What has
been done is constitutional. Section 175 of the constitution grants the
president of Nigeria the powers and the prerogative to grant pardon, remission,
commute, relief, etc. Section 212 grants similar powers to state governors.
That’s why almost every year state governors together with their chief judges
go to prison to free some people. Again, it’s not an act of arbitrariness.
There’s a procedure. Persons who seek state pardon present their prayers
through the committee on the prerogative of mercy which is chaired by the
Attorney-General of the Federation. Recommendations are then made and the
president, in his wisdom will then look at this.
Then, the constitution says that the president can only act after consultations
with the Council of State (Sub-section 2) of section 175). What the framers of
the law intended to do with that is to ensure that though the powers is
exercised with the discretion of the president, that there’s no abuse, that
there’s proper consultation, that other people had an input and that at the end
of the day, whatever the president decides to do would have been reviewed by
the other persons. Look at the constitution and you would see that the
composition of the Council of States is made up of serving governors, those who
have served at the highest levels in this country… There is a process and
there’s a lot of wisdom involved.”
