Though no execution was recorded in Nigeria, the total number of death penalty recorded as at the end of 2017 stood at 621, the second highest in the world after China while 2,285 people were known to be under death sentence.
This was disclosed by a report released April 12th, 2018 by Amnesty International, a global movement for the protection of human rights.
The report noted that in Nigeria, 68 persons were commuted, 17 pardons were granted while 28 persons under death sentence were exonerated in 2017– the highest in the world.
Global death sentences decreased by 17 per cent to over 2,591 in 2017 from 3,117 recorded in the previous year with over 21,919 people under death sentence as at year-end 2017.
In the same vein, the total number of executions carried out by countries around the world (excluding China) in 2017 was down for the second consecutive time by 4 per cent to 993 compared to 1,032 executions recorded in 2016.
The Middle East countries of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan accounted for 84 per cent of all recorded executions globally in 2017; Iran alone accounted for 51 per cent of this figure.
China, with over 1,000 recorded executions, remains the country with the highest number of executions worldwide though the Chinese government still classifies figures as “a state secret”, thus making it difficult to obtain complete official statistics.
The report noted that the United States of America (USA) was the only country to carry out executions in the Americas region while Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and the USA were the only country in the region that imposed death sentences.
Eleven countries of USA, China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Japan, North Korea, Afghanistan and Malaysia excluding Syria and Libya were fingered by Amnesty International to have persistently executed in the last five years (2013 – 2017).
Of the 31 countries in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), only two countries – Somalia (24) and South Sudan (4) – recorded execution in 2017 compared to five countries that did so in 2016.
Overall, the number of recorded death sentences in the SSA region dropped by 19 per cent to 878 in 2017 relative to 2016 figure 1,086 in the previous year.
“So far, 170 (88%) of the 193 member states of the UN were execution-free in 2017”, the report observed.
