Many prisoners are languishing on death row in Nigeria's...

Many prisoners are languishing on death row in Nigeria's various prisons due to the failure of some state governors to endorse their execution warrants.
Investigations by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) showed that many condemned prisoners have spent between two and 10 years behind bars without being executed as sentenced by the courts.Although the exact number of those on death row was not made known by prisons authorities, NAN, learnt that there are between two and 20 such prisoners in some prisons.
The Kaduna Central Prison has the lowest number of inmates, two, awaiting the hangman's noose, while the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison, Lagos, has the highest number, 26.
A NAN correspondent who visited some prisons in the country reported that most condemned prisoners are found in the Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Enugu, Owerri, Port Harcourt and Makurdi prisons.
The "long stay" in prison of those awaiting the hangman's noose was a major source of concern to the authorities of the Nigeria Prisons Service (NPS).
"We have about 26 persons on our list and it is disturbing to us, because most of them are either condemned armed robbers, homicide convicts or those who committed manslaughter," a senior officer at the Kirirkiri Maximum Security Prison, Lagos, who pleaded anonymity, told NAN.
The officer said there was no justification in keeping the convicts for so long, noting that the psychological trauma suffered by such persons could only be best imagined, and a source of concern to the prison services.
A prison source told NAN that some of the condemned prisoners had appealed against their conviction, and urged the judiciary to expedite action on such cases to ensure that justice was done.
The outgoing Controller-General of Prisons, Alhaji Ibrahim Jarma, recently told NAN that there was no fairness in keeping condemned prisoners for a long time, as they know they are to die.
Jarma suggested prompt execution of their sentences, or the commutation of their death sentences to life imprisonment by the judiciary to save "those on death row the pains of long waiting."