As Senate Holds Public Hearing on Death Penalty for Kidnappers…

Inside Nigeria’s Senate, grief, rage and fear are driving a hard choice, as lawmakers confront a chilling question from the Justice Sector and Rights groups wondering whether hanging kidnappers will save the nation, or haunt it. Sunday Aborisade reports.

The mood inside the National Assembly penultimate week was unmistakably grim. Outside the chamber, Nigeria reeled from yet another week of abductions, schoolchildren snatched from classrooms, farmers dragged from fields, commuters kidnapped on highways turned into killing grounds. Inside, senators gathered under the weight of public anger, searching for an answer bold enough to reassure a frightened nation.

What emerged was one of the most controversial legislative pushes in recent history: a proposal to impose the death penalty for kidnapping by classifying it as terrorism. To many lawmakers, it felt like the ultimate show of resolve. To Nigeria’s justice establishment, it felt like a fatal mistake.

As the Senate Joint Committees on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters; National Security and Intelligence; and Interior convened a public hearing on amendments to the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, something rare occurred.

Almost every major justice, legal and human rights institution in the country lined up on one side of the argument, and it was not the Senate’s.

Attorney-General of the Federation, Nigerian Bar Association, the National Human Rights Commission, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, the Nigerian Law Reform Commission, the Federation of Women Lawyers, the Department of State Services and other stakeholders spoke with one voice: the death penalty will not stop kidnapping.

Their opposition was not rooted in sympathy for criminals. It was anchored in law, experience and an uncomfortable reading of Nigeria’s own history.

No one disputed the scale of the crisis. Kidnapping has metastasised into a lucrative, organised and militarised enterprise. Ransoms now routinely run into tens or hundreds of millions of naira.

Victims are sometimes killed even after payment. Communities are abandoned. Schools are shut. Agriculture is disrupted. Families are bankrupt. Fear has become a constant companion of daily life.

It was this national trauma that shaped the Senate’s earlier debate at plenary, where lawmakers overwhelmingly backed a bill sponsored by Senate Leader, Senator OpeyemiBamidele.

The proposed amendment seeks to designate kidnapping, hostage-taking and related offences as acts of terrorism, extending capital punishment not only to kidnappers but also to their financiers, informants, harbourers, transporters and logistics suppliers.

Presiding over that session, Senate President, GodswillAkpabio described kidnapping as an existential threat.

Support came from across party lines. Senator Adams Oshiomhole dismissed deradicalisationprogrammes as failures and argued that death was the only language terrorists understood.

Senator Orji UzorKalu spoke of widows and violated girls, insisting Nigerians had suffered enough. Senator Victor Umeh demanded scrutiny of banks and institutions allegedly facilitating ransom payments.

Minority Leader, Abba Moro declared that the Senate could no longer allow the country to be terrorised. It was, politically, an easy moment to be tough.

Unfortunately the public hearing that followed the lawmakers debate told a more complicated story.

Leading the resistance was the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Lateef Fagbemi (SAN). His intervention cut through the emotional fog. While acknowledging the Senate’s concern and the gravity of kidnapping, he warned that mandatory capital punishment could backfire spectacularly.

Fagbemi said, “Though emotionally appealing, the death penalty risks creating what may be described as a ‘martyrdom effect’.”

In terror-related or ideological conflicts, he noted that state-sanctioned executions can validate criminal narratives, fuel recruitment and provoke cycles of retaliatory violence. Far from deterring crime, they can entrench it.

More troubling, Fagbemi warned, were the international consequences. Nigeria’s counterterrorism efforts rely heavily on cooperation with foreign governments like intelligence sharing, financial tracking and extradition of suspects.

Many of those countries, he explained, had abolished the death penalty and will not extradite individuals to face execution.

“This could unintentionally turn other countries into safe havens for terror suspects and financiers,” the AGF cautioned, “thereby weakening, rather than strengthening, Nigeria’s security architecture.”

He reminded lawmakers of another inconvenient reality: Nigeria rarely carries out executions.

Though death sentences remain on the statute books, a de facto moratorium has existed for years. The result is a swelling population of death-row inmates, overcrowded correctional facilities, prolonged incarceration and prisons that risk becoming incubators for further radicalisation.

Fagbemi argued: “Our problem is not that punishments are not severe enough. It is that arrests are uncertain, investigations are weak and prosecutions are slow.”

His prescription was blunt: certainty of arrest and conviction, backed by life imprisonment without parole for the most heinous offences.

The National Human Rights Commission reinforced this argument with constitutional force.

While recognising the Senate’s intention to curb violent crime, the Commission warned that expanding capital punishment within a criminal justice system still plagued by investigative failures and prosecutorial gaps significantly increases the risk of irreversible miscarriages of justice.

Any law, the NHRC insisted, must enhance, not diminish, the enjoyment of human rights and comply with Nigeria’s constitutional safeguards and international obligations.

It called for a mandatory human rights impact assessment of the Bill before passage, stressing that once an execution is carried out, there is no remedy for error.

The Nigerian Bar Association took a scalpel to the proposal. Its concern was not only punishment but precision.

Kidnapping, the NBA argued, is not automatically terrorism. A blanket classification risks distorting both criminal law and international legal standards.

The association recommended that only kidnapping involving organised criminal or terrorist networks, or acts intended to intimidate the public or coerce government, should fall within terrorism legislation.

It urged lawmakers to abandon mandatory death sentences in favour of graduated, discretionary sentencing that reflects intent, role, harm and outcome.

Judicial discretion, the NBA said, is not weakness; it is justice. Penalties could range from lengthy imprisonment to life sentences, with death, if retained at all, reserved for the most extreme and aggravated circumstances.

The NBA also warned of technical pitfalls: vague definitions of intent, unclear accomplice liability, absence of defences such as duress, and conflicts with existing state anti-kidnapping laws.

In its view, a poorly drafted federal amendment could create confusion rather than clarity.

Within the hearing room, even some senators acknowledged the complexity.

Senator Ekong Sampson argued that criminal law must differentiate between attempted kidnapping, cases where victims are released unharmed and those ending in death. Lumping all scenarios together, he suggested, risks injustice.

An international perspective came from Prof. UchennaEmelonye, former United Nations Human Rights Envoy and Professor of Human Rights Law at Bournemouth University. He described the convergence of opposition as extraordinary.

Emelonye said, “What we are seeing here is not ideological posturing but empirical reality.”

Global evidence, he argued, shows that expanding the death penalty does not stop kidnapping.

Countries that have succeeded, he argued, did so through intelligence-led policing, effective investigations, speedy trials, border control, arms regulation and victim-centred justice.

Broadening capital punishment in a fragile system, he warned, invites wrongful convictions without delivering measurable security gains.

By the end of the hearing, the Senate committees promised to study all submissions carefully.

Yet, the dilemma facing lawmakers remains stark.

Every day, new kidnappings inflame public anger. Every murdered victim strengthens the demand for ultimate punishment.

For politicians, the gallows offer the appearance of decisiveness. But history suggests that laws born of rage rarely produce safety.

Nigeria stands at a crossroads. One path offers swift, symbolic retribution that satisfies outrage but risks injustice, diplomatic isolation and deeper insecurity.

The other demands the slower, harder work of reforming policing, intelligence, prosecution and prisons.

As the Senate weighs its final report, the question lingers, heavy and unresolved: will Nigeria choose the comfort of vengeance, or the discipline of justice?