Nigeria's Foreign Affairs Minister Sule Lamido in an...

Nigeria's Foreign Affairs Minister Sule Lamido in an audience with a European Union troika at Abuja rebutted the EU's criticism of the death penalty.
Responding to this "sense of humanity" of the EU troika, the Foreign Affairs Minister disagreed completely with the context and substance of the issue of death penalty as it applies to Nigeria. Taking off clearly from a rather radical - nationalist appreciation of the ideological import of the EU's anti-death penalty campaign, Lamido took a historical perspective.
His response posed the death penalty in terms of its Western, colonialist origin: "When we were your colonies, there were a number of things you considered punishable by death, including assertion of the right to independence by the local people which was seen as confronting the crown, and freedom fighters were killed for that". So, as far as Lamido is concerned, it could be suprising that the EU would now feel concerned, touched and consumed about death penalty, particularly when, according to the Minister "we are by the minute, by the second, sentenced to death by AIDS.., Malaria passes a death sentence in Africa every other minute". And then his clincher: "When we are lectured on compassion, sanctity of life and love of our own people, we feel patronised because, historically, we haven't seen that, (from EU to Africa)".
As for death sentences arising from Sharia, the Minister said that was a free choice of Muslims and it was constitutional and democratic.