Nigeria: Yar'Adua Stretches Constitution

24 November 2008
editorial

THE media, last week, celebrated a presidential pardon for a 57-year-old armed robbery convict, Ibrahim Aliyu, who had been in prison for 25 years, 22 of them awaiting execution.

Presidential spokesman, Mr Olusegun Adeniyi, gushed that President Umaru Yar'Adua acted with powers the Constitution awarded him in Section 175. Evidently, neither the President nor his advisers read that Section well. It never gave the President the powers he used.

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