If you handed a man who defended himself against a feral and vicious assailant a death sentence, you’ve not dispensed justice but affirmed injustice. If you send a man who acted in self-defence to the gallows, that’s a miscarriage of justice, not a logical and meticulous application of the law.
On Tuesday, the governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadu Fintiri, granted Sunday Jackson and about seven others a pardon. Not much would have been made of the news and would probably have flown under the radar, overshadowed by the deluge of topical events and incidents that dominate public discourse in the country, were it not for the inclusion of Jackson among those the governor granted clemency. The worthiness of the news is inextricably tied to the situation of Jackson whose case has put the nation’s judiciary in the global spotlight.
On a beautiful morning on the 27th of January, 2015, 29-year-old Jackson was tilling the land and tending to his crop in the Kodomti community in the Numan local government area when a Fulani herdsman, Buba Ardo Bawuro, intentionally herded his cattle onto his farm. When Jackson accosted him and told him to move his cattle out of his farm, Bawuro pulled out a knife and violently attacked Jackson. However, Jackson overpowered and subdued him, took the knife from him and stabbed him in self-defence. Bawuro later died from the injury he sustained during the attack.
Despite obvious and irrefutable proof that Jackson acted in self-defence, without which he could have lost his life, he was handed a death sentence by two separate courts. A high court in Yola, Adamawa State, sentenced him to death by hanging in 2021 and the Supreme Court upheld the judgment in 2024. The judgment sparked widespread outrage and condemnation. Throughout his trial, he became the symbol of the persecution faced by Christians in the Middle Belt and Northern region of the country and the invidious criminalisation of the effort by farmers to fend off rampaging and sometimes violent herders who destroy their crops and, in some cases, usurp their land.
The pardon granted by the governor on Tuesday would not only bring relief and succour to Jackson but to millions of people who have watched helplessly as the system that was supposed to protect him hung him out to dry and left him for dead. But beyond the clemency which, it must be said, came after intense pressure and relentless campaign against the judgment within and outside Nigeria, hard, real and pertinent questions about why our judiciary’s seeming predilection for putting itself in situations that undermine its authority and erode public confidence in it must be asked.
With the sheer surreality of the many judgments delivered by some judges in courts across the country in recent years, one cannot help but wonder if these verdicts are rooted in sound judicial decisions and fair, just and impartial interpretation of the law, or if they are influenced by socio-political factors. If you handed a man who defended himself against a feral and vicious assailant a death sentence, you’ve not dispensed justice but affirmed injustice. If you send a man who acted in self-defence to the gallows, that’s a miscarriage of justice, not a logical and meticulous application of the law.
Jackson has spent the last decade in prison for defending his life and property. He should never have been prosecuted or spent a day in prison, but a group of men in white wigs and black gowns, who should be the palladium of our constitution, decided to turn logic on its head and made a mockery of our laws by gleefully engaging in what can only be deemed a travesty of justice.
But then one can take pride and solace in the position of Justice Helene Morenkeji Ogunwumiju, JSC, who gave a dissenting judgment. A voice of reason and conscientious legal arbiter who disagreed with the judgment of her fellow justices affirming the death sentence of Jackson. In her poignant, logical and reasonable dissent, she upheld the right of Jackson to defend himself. She asserted that Jackson was right to confront his assailant, who attacked him on his farm, even if it led to the death of his attacker, in defence of his life and property as referenced under Section 33(2) of the 1999 Constitution.
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