Half of Death Row Inmates in Sub-Saharan Africa Are In Nigeria

Prison facilities across sub-Saharan Africa are housing at least 5,841 death-row inmates, global rights body, Amnesty International, said in its annual review of the global death penalty.

Of the total number of death row inmates as of December 2021, about 3,036, which represents over 52%, were in Nigeria.

Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan, Zambia, Cameroon, Mauritania, Ghana, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Mali, Malawi and Liberia, follows. 

Even though the death sentence is legal in Nigeria and other African countries, executions are a rarity. For instance in 2021, despite sentencing 56 people to death, Amnesty International said Nigeria has no record of executions. Between 2007 and 2017, there were seven executions in the country with the last one taking place in 2016.

In several countries in 2021, the death penalty was deployed as an instrument of state repression against minorities and protesters, with governments showing an utter disregard for safeguards and restrictions on the death penalty established under international human rights law and standards, the rights group said.

InFocus

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