An international human rights organisation, Advocats Sans Frontières (ASF) France, also known as Lawyers Without Borders has lamented the high number of inmates on death row in Nigerian correctional services which it puts at 3,600.

The organisation which highlighted that Nigeria holds the highest number of death row inmates in sub-Saharan Africa, emphasised that the figure has continued to increase as new death sentences are being handed down regularly.

The Country Director of ASF, Ms. Angela Uzoma-Iwuchukwu, gave the figure in Abuja, during a high-level technical consultation, where she raised concerns over the growing number of inmates on death row in the country.

According to her, while Nigeria has observed a voluntary moratorium on executions since 2014, the absence of a formal policy leaves death row inmates vulnerable to execution at any time.

Uzoma-Iwuchukwu said, “We have around 3,600 persons on death row in Nigeria, and out of that we have about 63 women. So that’s actually a small percentage. However, there are peculiar issues that women on death row are facing, and one of them is that a lot of them ended up on death row because they fought back on the sort of abuse that they were experiencing.

“And during their trial, the spousal abuse or domestic violence was not put into consideration during their trials, and this led to their conviction and also their ending up on the death row.

“So, this is one of the reasons why it is important to bring up the issue, the gender perspective of women on death row, the peculiarities.” (AriseNews TV)