By Charles Igbo
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has dragged Predicted Bola Tinubu for reversing the clemency he granted a number of inmates.
Atiku, who was the Peoples Democratic Party’s Presidential Candidate expressed grave concern over the process that led to the earlier inclusion of some convicts on the list.
He demanded transparency from the Presidency.
In a statement made public by Phrank Shaibu, his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku dismissed the reversal of the clemency earlier granted some convicts as “an act of shame, not wisdom.”
The former Vice President was reacting, like not a few Nigerians, to the release of a reviewed list of inmates after President Tinubu revoked the presidential clemency he had earlier granted them.
In the new list, released on Wednesday by Tinubu’s spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, 140 inmates were affected.
In the earlier list, for example, Tinubu had granted full pardon to Maryam Sanda convicted to death by hanging for killing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, in 2020. But in the reviewed list released on Wednesday, Tinubu reversed the full pardon, and commutted the death sentence to 12 years imprisonment. Having been awaiting the hangman’s noose for six years at the Kuje Medium Prisons, she will now serve six more years before embracing freedom.
But reacting to the many reversals and the decision that brought them about, Atiku questioned the process that led to the initial inclusion of many undeserving convicts on the list, and demanded transparency from the Presidency. The former Vice President said Nigerians were stuck with a “government that thinks after it acts.”
The statement reads:
“Once again, Nigerians have witnessed a government that doesn’t lead — it reacts. President Bola Tinubu has “cancelled” his own pardon for drug traffickers, kidnappers, and other hardened criminals, but only after Nigerians shouted loud enough to wake him from his moral slumber.
“Let’s be clear: this U-turn is not an act of wisdom, it’s an act of shame.
“If the public had kept quiet, would convicted drug lords and kidnappers be walking free today under the President’s blessing? Who thought it was a brilliant idea to reward crime and betray justice? Who signed off on such national embarrassment?
“These are the questions every Nigerian deserves answers to:
Who compiled the list of beneficiaries?
“What criteria justified freeing kidnappers and drug offenders?
Where was the Attorney-General when this absurdity was cooked up?
“And why does this government only “discover its conscience” after Nigerians express outrage?
“This pattern has become too familiar — announce the unthinkable, watch the country erupt, then hurriedly reverse course as if governance is a game of “trial and error.”
“A presidential pardon is not a social experiment. It is a sacred constitutional power meant to reflect justice, mercy, and national interest — not to reward impunity or test public patience.
“How can a government that pardons criminals lecture citizens about morality, order, or discipline? How can a Commander-in-Chief who nearly freed kidnappers claim to be fighting insecurity?”
He added that the entire episode exposes one bitter truth: “Nigeria is being governed without foresight, without empathy, and without shame.
“If the President truly means well, let him publish the list of all those who were meant to benefit from this scandal. Let Nigerians see the names, the crimes, and the hands that signed off on this reckless indulgence.
“Until then, this cancellation is nothing but damage control — too little, too late.”
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