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- Agony of 419 convicts awaiting the hangman in Jos, Kaduna prisons
- ‘I want to die’, says 53-year-old inmate
From MURPHY GANAGANA, JOHN ADAMS (Minna), BERE GYANG (Jos) and EMMANUEL ADEYEMI (Lokoja)
They are holed up in nearly dark cells where a thin line separates day and night, staring gloomily at anything in sight; they share a common fate, all of them to die by hanging for unpardonable, heinous crimes committed on various occasions. While their fate had been sealed, some, for almost two decades, an endless wait for the hangman further deepened the gloom.
Apart from the three rations of meal, which they enjoy daily, they are stripped of privileges accorded prisoners convicted and serving jail terms, as well as awaiting trial inmates; they are outcasts in the prison community, men and women condemned to death, and therefore, are of no value and hope.
Inscribed conspicuously on their uniform is the date death penalty was passed on each of them, but as hopelessness had become their lot, they are kept in the dark as to when the hangman’s noose will come dangling on their necks. Despite committing sacrilegious crimes, a few of them still invest hope on a miraculous escape from the grip of death by divine intervention; others, however, pray for death to come fast so as to end the long, tortuous wait.
Waiting to die
Among them is Ikechukwu Okoh, aged 53, an indigene of Enugu State, arrested at Sabon Wuse in Tafa Local Government Area of Niger State 17 years ago, over armed robbery. Three of his alleged comrades-in crime fled the scene, but Ikechukwu could not escape the long arms of the law as he was nabbed and arraigned at the High Court 8, Minna, where he was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005.
A year before his arrest, precisely in 1999, he had impregnated a young woman whom he wanted to marry but had no money to actualise his plan; overwhelmed by inordinate ambition, as he told one of our correspondents, he ventured into armed robbery to enable him raise funds and establish a provision store to cater for his family, but it ended a fatal attempt for which he would pay the supreme price.
He was still burdened by the fate of his unknown child when news of his mother’s death filtered to him in prison five years after he was convicted; in 2015, his father also passed on. “In the circumstance, it is better for me to die as pronounced by the court, but I am still waiting for death to come; I am tired of waiting”, he told our undercover reporter recently.
Like Ikechukwu, Aminu Tanko has also been on the death row for 12 years at the Minna prison. Convicted in 2005 by a high court, he was arrested in 2002 along the Mokwa-Makera road in Niger State, after four members of his gang were killed in a gun duel with the police during a robbery escapade.
Thirty-five year-old Aminu hails from Kebbi State, but relocated to Kano State in 2001, where he lived with a friend unknown to his family back home. He says his friend who was among those killed by the police, lured him into committing the act when he needed a sum of N50, 000 to grow his onions business. Unfortunately, he was caught while robbing the first vehicle of their operation, an act he claimed to have indulged in, for the first time. He is left in the cold awaiting the hangman, even as members of his family are unaware of his whereabouts.
Ikechukwu and Aminu are among 21 convicts on death row in Niger State, including two teenagers, Yahaya Jaji Mohamed and Dan’asabe Lawal, who were students of Army Day Secondary School Minna and Abubakar Dada Secondary School, Paiko, respectively, before their arrest and conviction on murder charges in 2014.
It was learnt that of the 21 condemned convicts in Niger State, whose offences bordered on culpable homicide and armed robbery, no fewer than 15 had spent over a decade awaiting death, with their warrants gathering dust in shelves at the governor’s office, just as available records indicated that the last execution of condemned convict in the state, was in 1986.
Ironically, unlike Ikechukwu for whom life has become meaningless and wish to die soon, 45-year-old Mallam Ibrahim Mohammed, a father of 14 children born by two wives, is scared of death and drowned in self-pity, as he seeks divine intercession in staving the hangman’s noose.
Until recently when he was transferred to the Kaduna prison, which is among five prisons in the country with execution facilities, Ibrahim lived in isolation at the Kotonkarfe prison in Kogi State, where he was kept in a dingy cell since a death sentence was passed on him in May, this year.
Though known as an Islamic cleric, he did not wait for a twinkle before professing his readiness to accept Jesus Christ, to be saved from the hangman’s noose. “The devil pushed me to commit the act, but please, pray for me, I am ready to accept Christ”, he told a team of evangelists, which included one of our correspondents, on a visit to the prison two weeks ago.
Ibrahim, who hails from Kugbani village in Kogi State, had confessed to committing a barbaric act. In 2015, he murdered two siblings, Mohammed Kudu Abubakar and Umar Tanko Abubakar, in whose family home he once lived while in Bida, Niger State.
The duo, one of whom was a university graduate, had visited him in his village in search of spiritual help for employment and prosperity in business. Unknown to them, their host had a sinister plot to rob them of the Toyota Carina car in which they rode, and moved to perfect his desire in an unholy manner.
After convincing them to pass the night with him, he offered them a poisonous concoction in the guise of performing the spiritual help they requested, but with intent to kill, and when death failed to consume them within a period of time as expected, he hit them on the head with a pestle while they were reeling in pain, to hasten the process.
Mission accomplished, Ibrahim dug a shallow grave within his compound and buried them; then, took the car to Lokoja, the state capital, where he changed the colour and converted it to personal use. But nemesis caught up with him on January 10, 2016, when he was arrested by the police, and handed the death penalty by Justice Alaba Omolaye-Ajileye of the High Court of Kogi State, who described his act as “high level of exceptional wickedness”, while convicting him barely three months ago.
Prison, no barrier to sexual urge
In Plateau State, Janet and Ternenge, are among the three female convicts awaiting the hangman’s noose at the Jos prison, where a total of 249 inmates are on death row. Every sound or footstep drives fear into their spines, as the executioners’ slab, metres away from their cell serves as a constant reminder of the sad fate that had befallen them.
Janet, who hails from Gombe State, has been in the condemned convicts’ cell for six years, while Ternenge, of Tiv extraction from Benue, has spent five years. The two women in their early 30s were sentenced to death on murder charges, while the identity of the third female convict could not be ascertained at press time.
Of the 246 condemned male convicts in the prison, 33 occupy the main cell, 97 are in a new structure commissioned about four years ago, while the rest are in ward 1. On Sundays, the Christians are allowed out of the cell for church service between 8.am and 1.pm within the prison yard, while Muslim faithful enjoy same privilege on Fridays between 9.30am and 1.30pm.
At such intervals, it was learnt that the urge for sex snaps among condemned men and few women, who glanced lustfully even while being led back into their cells. To quench the desire, sources close to the inmates hinted our correspondent that both male and female indulged in masturbation to keep body and soul alive while keeping a date with the law.
Kaduna execution slab in ready mood
In Kaduna, it was learnt that 90 inmates, all male, drawn from various prisons across the country, are awaiting execution, just as 58 inmates at Oke Kura prison in Kwara State. Apart from those at Enugu, Port Harcourt, and Kirikiri prison in Lagos, which have execution facilities, the Jos and Kaduna prisons which also have such facilities, have 419 condemned convicts, waiting to be led into the gallows, which a source at the Kaduna prison said, was in good shape.
For 14 years, Idoko, the general provost of condemned convicts in Jos prison who hails from Benue State, had waited for the hangman after his conviction for murder and armed robbery; Baba Alhassan, an ex-police officer, shares same fate with him, and has spent a decade. Also in this league are Zakari, Reuben and Itama, whose hearts palpitate, especially at dusk, even though the last time a condemned inmate was led to the gallows in their prison, was in 1996.
“Our execution facility is in good shape as it is serviced regularly; the last time execution was done here, was 11 years ago”, the source said in response to Saturday Sun enquiries. For the convicts, they have no choice than to bear the burden and trauma of an endless wait for the hangman, except perhaps, a miracle happens.
