According to a post on X by Steven Kefas, founder of Middlebeltimes, while many focused on the Supreme Court judgment that upheld the death sentence of Sunday Jackson, one thing stood out. Helen Moronkeji Ogunwumiju, Supreme Court justice, disagreed. She stood alone against the majority. And in doing so, she gave voice to a question many Nigerians were already asking quietly: what does self-defence mean when your life is on the line?
Her dissent in the Sunday Jackson case was not loud. It was not dramatic. But it was fierce in its humanity.
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Sunday Jackson, a farmer from Adamawa State, had been sentenced to death for killing Buba Bawuro, a herder, during an altercation that Jackson said began as an attack on his life. The courts treated his response as a criminal act. Ogunwumiju saw it differently.
In her lone dissent, reported by This Day, she rejected the idea that a man stabbed twice and fighting for his life should be expected to pause and calculate legal proportions.
“It is not reasonable, nor indeed, natural, to expect that a man who has been stabbed twice and suddenly finds himself struggling for his life, would pause to calibrate the proportionality of his defensive action,” she wrote. “The expectation of retreat after such an attack is neither practical nor fair.”
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It was a judgment rooted not in abstraction, but in lived experience. Ogunwumiju argued that the law must be interpreted as people actually live, not as judges imagine from a distance. She faulted the trial court for relying almost entirely on Jackson’s confessional statement, which was neither challenged nor supported by forensic or eyewitness evidence. There was no clear medical evidence showing which of the stab wounds caused death. A coroner’s report existed, but there was no reference to a pathologist’s report in the judgment.
Even Jackson’s own police statement, she suggested, told a story of panic and survival, not premeditation. According to that statement, he was attacked in the bush, wrestled with his assailant, seized a dagger and struck back before fleeing in fear.
Ogunwumiju concluded that Jackson acted within the limits of self-defence and provocation under Section 33(2) of the 1999 Constitution. She went further. She called for executive clemency and urged that the case be reconsidered for pardon.
At the time, her words changed nothing on paper. The majority judgment stood. Jackson remained on death row. But dissent, in law, has a long memory.
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In December, Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, Adamawa State Governor, granted Sunday Jackson a pardon. The announcement, made by the governor’s chief press secretary Humwashi Wonosikou, said the decision was part of Christmas and New Year commemorations. Jackson, held at Kuje Medium Security Custodial Centre, walked free.
The pardon did not cite Ogunwumiju’s dissent. It did not need to. Its moral logic was already there.
For many Nigerians, the outcome felt like delayed justice. The case had become a symbol of how the legal system can appear detached from fear, danger and survival, especially for the poor. Ogunwumiju’s dissent gave that discomfort legal language and judicial weight.
That clarity did not come by accident.
Born on March 23, 1957, in Ondo State, Ogunwumiju graduated from the University of Lagos in 1977 and was called to the Nigerian Bar a year later. She began her career at the Legal Aid Council, where she spent a decade representing those who could not afford power or polish. It was an early grounding in the unequal ways justice is experienced.
She went on to serve as a chief magistrate, state sheriff and chief registrar of the High Court, before becoming a High Court judge for seven years and a justice of the Court of Appeal for 15. In November 2020, she was elevated to the Supreme Court.
Across these roles, a pattern has remained clear. Ogunwumiju is drawn to the human cost of law.
Beyond the bench, she has led the National Association of Women Judges in Nigeria, served with the International Association of Women Judges and chaired regional bodies examining law and religion in West Africa. Her work consistently returns to access, fairness and dignity.
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That focus was clear again when she recently called for a reimagining of Nigeria’s justice system. Speaking at the 25th anniversary of the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre, she argued that justice must be affordable, accessible and trauma-informed, especially for women and girls.
“Access to justice must no longer be treated as a privilege but as a fundamental promise of nationhood,” she said.
She warned against systems that doubt survivors, delay cases or pressure women into silence, arguing that such systems do not dispense justice but deepen harm. The first response to distress, she said, should be support, not suspicion.
It is the same philosophy that shaped her dissent in the Jackson case. A refusal to strip human fear from legal reasoning. A belief that the law should protect life before it punishes survival.
Today, Ogunwumiju is also a mother and grandmother, with children and grandchildren.
Ogunwumiju did not free Sunday Jackson with her pen. But she helped Nigeria see why he should be free.
