ASF France, an international rights group, says 82 female Nigerians are currently on death row in different correctional centres across the country.
Angela Uzoma-Iwuchukwu, the Country Director of ASF France in Nigeria, revealed this on Wednesday at a capacity-building session on gender issues in the use of the death penalty in Abuja.
She said the number is one of the highest figures for women on death row in sub-Saharan Africa.
“We strongly believe that these women, who have often been neglected, forgotten, because they are behind bars and on death row, we have decided to raise their voices and their peculiar circumstances,” she said.
According to her, “there are gender issues around the application of capital punishment. It is often projected as being neutral, but the death penalty is not neutral. There are gender biases all across the criminal justice system, starting from the point of arrest, conviction and even incarceration of women who are facing the death penalty.”
She explained that many of the women are victims of domestic violence, and when they react and it results in homicide, the justice system fails to recognise them as victims.
“What we see in practice is that they are subjected to further violence, further discrimination within the system. And we argue that these women are in fact convicted and tried for more than their crimes. They are tried for more than the crimes that they have committed. They are tried for being women who dared to commit crimes,” she said.
She added that poverty is a major factor. “A lot of them are unable to pay the services of a lawyer… the quality of legal defence that you have would indeed determine whether you will end up on death row or not.”
Uzoma-Iwuchukwu cited the case of a young woman in Katsina State who was sentenced to death by stoning for becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
Through ASF France’s intervention, the Court of Appeal overturned the sentence.
“The only evidence they got against her was that she got pregnant out of wedlock but they never asked who got her pregnant,” she said.
She called for a moratorium on executions and said women who have survived gender-based violence should be recognised as victims and given fair consideration during sentencing.
Dr. Chioma Kanu, Executive Director of Mothers and Marginalised Advocacy Centre, said every inmate has a mother, wife, daughter, or sister who suffers when the system fails. She said, “Be not deceived, not every death row inmate is a criminal. Some are convicted based on confessions obtained under police torture… Some cannot afford legal representatives. Remember, we can release an innocent prisoner but we cannot wake the dead.”
She added that they want justice for victims and security for families.