Why capital punishment should be sustained –Akande

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Dr. Victor Oluwasegun Akande, who recently completed his PhD in Law at Imo State University, has voiced his strong support for the continuation of capital punishment in Nigeria. Akande, who served as the representative for Ojo Constituency 1 in the Lagos State House of Assembly from 2015 to 2023, believes that there are significant issues with the current Nigerian constitution and that urgent reforms are needed. In an exclusive interview with OLADIPUPO AWOJOBI, Akande discussed various legal topics including plea bargaining and the conditions under which a lawyer can ethically reject a case. Excerpts:

What motivated you to pursue doctorate degree in law despite being a politician?
When you are in undergraduate classes, if you really want to go far, you would see some mistakes in some courses that you do. I took my PhD thesis from my course in administrative law as an undergraduate student. Since then I had been trying to research on it and study the kind of privileges there. In the course of studying public officers law, there was a question I asked that Section 2A of Public Officers Act is more or less an immunity for any public official who commits a crime and that this act is protecting the person from being prosecuted. There were a lot of arguments and that was why I personally picked interest in it. I also went into human rights and constitutional law for my masters and PhD programmes. In my inquisitiveness, I decided to research on it.

So what were your findings?
I did a comparative analysis of the UK, South Africa and Nigeria. What I saw was that other climes have respect for human rights and even the public officials that ought to protect people against abuse of fundamental human rights are even being abused in countries like Nigeria.

In what sense?
Let’s take for instance, nobody wants to know whether a policeman is right or not, they condemn him most times. Look at the #EndSARS crisis of 2020, even policemen were abused, their fundamental human rights were abused by the masses. The people that ought to protect others are being abused. They became victims of their own misgivings.

One would have expected that since we are in a democratic government, there should be a high level of respect for human rights unlike under the military, are we getting there compared to the military era?
We are politically mature, but many things are bad in the country. Let’s look at South Africa, if you look at their laws, they have respect for human rights and they follow it to the letter. There can be some skirmishes, they still respect human rights. They don’t pat people that abuse their laws on the back, they deal with them seriously. Whether you are in a high position or not, you will face the law when you are wrong. But in this place, when you run foul of the law, and you abuse fundamental human rights, and you are highly placed, they would praise you. We praise some of the people who ought to be in jail and give them titles.

Is that not an indictment on the judiciary?
We are not talking about the judiciary, we are talking about the laws, the statutes.

But the judiciary is there to interpret the laws…
The constitution is above every other morality regardless of the law. Morality is not law, it can only be part of law. Moral justification is not law. Once we have agreed that this thing has become law, it has become a norm, culture and tradition that we have to follow. If it is enshrined in our statutes that this how we want to do it, until we are able to change it, until we effect change, repeal or reenact it, it would continue to be what it is. So, it’s what is in the law that the judges will interpret. It is time we started looking into those laws if some of them are obsolete, and see if some of them cannot meet the standard of living now. The more we expand, the more problems come, and we have to look into the laws and adjust. Nigeria is moving, we are going to a new era, new things are coming up, so, it is time we looked into all the laws and adjust them into what they supposed to be.

Talking about constitutions, did you study the Nigerian constitution generally?
I cannot cover the whole constitution, I only selected the areas that concern my research work. I talk about Public Officers Protection Laws.

How do you think we can make our human rights laws conform with what is obtainable in some other parts of the world, especially South Africa that you talked about?
With the various United Nations conventions that we are signatories to, what do we take out of them? There were various seminars, conferences, that a majority of our people attended, what did they get from them? When they get home, did they come back to analyse what they saw there? For instance, we had the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) conference, the issue of human rights was discussed there, what did we take home from there? We should look at our laws, where there are lacunas, where there are shortfalls and shortcomings, we should try to look at them and bring some corrections forward. We should be mature enough to call a spade a spade. Many of our people would not allow reforms to see the light of the day. It’s like you giving me suggestions to hang myself, do you think I would take to it. These are the problems we are having. Until we are mature and say no matter what happens or highly placed anybody is, we will tell ourselves the truth. It might affect us today, it would be beneficial to us and the future generations later. Until we start doing our laws the right way, we may not get there. Those things we brought from the conventions, we should apply them.

What do you think should be the roles of lawyers in the development of our nation, and what is the relationship between law and politics?
All of us are political animals, whether you like it or not. Even in our immediate families, we play politics. So it is not necessary to ask whether lawyers can play politics or not. You can see that we elected new officers during the last NBA conference. You are a liar if you say you are not a politician. Even in the church, they appoint leaders, so how do they choose them. Some people would say they are pastors and that they are not politicians, it’s not true. I have not seen that person that is not a politician. Even in the palace, among the chiefs, somebody must lead, somebody must be the second in command. There must be various positions that would be held. So how do we do this? The only thing is that don’t trample on my rights beyond what I can bear. Then, if you have your own rights, don’t affect my own. There are various institutions that maintain these rights, the court is just part of it. Who are those people that are directly involved in the court; the judges and the lawyers. So, if they come, what would they talk about.

What is your opinion about capital punishment?
People are changing from death sentence, but if you want to do this in Africa, people would want to hide under it to commit murder. So, you have to be stringent on some punishments.
If you want to kill others, you should be killed. If you want to stop unnecessary killings, then capital punishment should be used to serve as a deterrent to others to stop them from carrying out this serious crime. Look at those who use human beings for rituals, if you don’t deal with them in that manner, they would continue their act. They would say ‘it’s not more than life imprisonment and I can be pardoned later.’ The person you killed is gone, he cannot come back. He might be the bread winner of the family and God might have chosen him to bring out the glory of the family and you have cut it short and you want to continue to enjoy your life. It depends on the drafters of our laws, if they don’t want it to continue, it is left for them. Will you now tell him to pay blood money for the family of the deceased as fine, he would just pay and go ahead to kill another person.

You have been a politician and a lawmaker, now you are a lawyer…
I have been a lawyer even while serving as a lawmaker. They even gave me a committee on Judiciary, Human Rights, Public Petitions and LASIEC. Everything I did was on law. I took petitions, and you must know what the law says to do this. Then, I used to leave office around 12 midnight.

You are an experienced lawyer, there is an argument about what should make a lawyer reject case…
The fact is that even a criminal must be represented. You owe your client a duty of secrecy. You cannot go and tell the court that this is what your client did, let the law take it’s course. You might reject a case based on principle, but that is not what the ethics say. Everybody must be represented and he or she must be given a fair hearing. Let the judge say if that person is guilty or not. Even when you know that he committed the offence, you will tell the person that you committed the offence, you have to plead for mercy and you must show remorse for what you have done. But if he insisted that he won’t take that course, you might decide not take up the case. But don’t allow him to tell you all the secrets in the matter if he does and you refuse the case, you would put yourself in trouble.

How?
He has divulged everything to you and you know everything, that is when you see people being killed by hired assassins. If you notice that he is not ready to do the right thing, you can tell him that it is not your area of practice. Don’t even tell him to go and meet another person after you have known his secret, you would put yourself in trouble. It is better you stop probing further. Anybody that comes to you would tell you what would favour him or her. It is by probing that you would know and try very hard to get the truth from him.

What of plea bargaining, what is your take on it?
It’s good and it’s not good; you stole my N10 million and after looking at it, ‘I say okay go and give me N5m or N7m and you can go’, you would bring the money and they would reduce your sentence. It’s not that they would let you go like that, but you plead with them and then they would consider you after saying you are sorry and that you are ready to return part of the money and your sentence would be reduced. It’s a welcome idea, if you insist that the person should go to jail you would not get any money back. We are now looking at restitution in Lagos State. If you go to jail, it would not be the maximum sentence for the offence if your have restituted.