The attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of...

The attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of Bauchi State, Mallam Habib Aliyu warned against the abolition of the death penalty in Nigeria saying that any such attempt was an invitation for a military coup. "My opinion is that Nigeria is simply not ripe for us to abolish the capital punishment from our laws... The insecurity situation in the country is already disturbing and frightening. And the only deterrence appears to be the death penalty. The moment you abolish it, it is as if you are telling the armed robbers, the criminals and the assassins that whatever you do, you will not be killed. If you know you won't be killed, and you have the hope that you may spend some few days in the prison and be free, there would be no inhibition to your heinous crime", he said. "Now imagine the situation where you tell a soldierman that even if you kill the incumbent head of state through a coup d' etat, you would not be killed, there would be another coup tomorrow because he would bear at the back of his mind that even if he is caught, some of his colleagues who escaped being caught would organize another coup and free him. For us to abolish the death penalty in the country is like abolishing the country's nascent democracy", he qdded.