Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has weighed in on the death sentence handed down to a convict, Olowokere Segun.
Segun had in 2014 found guilty of stealing and robbery, an operation he was said to undertake alongside his fellow-convict, Sunday Morakinyo with whom he was armed with dane gun and cultass.
The crime, which the convicts committed in 2010 while Segun was 17 is now making the headlines to the point that Governor Ademola Adeleke is mulling granting him full pardon in exercise of the prerogative of mercy conferred on him by section 214 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Contributing to the issue, Falana faulted Segun’s conviction saying his trial before the regular court was impromper given his age at that particular time.
“We submit that the trial, conviction, and death sentence passed on Olowokere Segun were illegal, null and void in every material particular. Since it was not denied that Olowokere was 17 years old at the time of his trial, the Osun State High Court lacked the jurisdictional competence to have tried him.
“The case ought to have been instituted in the Osun State Family Court which is exclusively empowered to exercise jurisdiction in any criminal proceeding involving or relating to any penalty, forfeiture, punishment, or other liability in respect of an offence committed by a child, against a child or against the interest of a child,” the lawyer argued in a statement he released.
The statement read further: “Since the trial, conviction and death sentence passed on Olowokere Segun cannot be justified in law, Governor Ademola Adeleke has rightly granted him full pardon in exercise of the prerogative of mercy conferred on him by section 214 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
