Al-Mustapha: Shehu Sani Seeks Parole

Prominent Northern Nigeria-based rights activist and also a victim of the late General Sani Abacha’s despotic regime, Comrade Shehu Sani has pleaded that the former Head of State’s Chief Security Officer, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha be granted parole.

Al-Mustapha, along with Lateef Sofolahan were sentenced to death yesterday.

Speaking in a telephone chat with P.M.NEWS today, Shehu Sani pleaded that Al-Mustapha’s death sentence be commuted to a life imprisonment, warning that sentiments should not be attached to Al-Mustapha’s trial and consequent death sentence.

He said: “As a human rights activist, we are opposed to death sentence. Though the government he had served murdered many people, killed people using the instrumentality of the courts, we as rights activists are not in support of his being hanged. But he should be able to appeal his case. Whatever the outcome of the appeal, the death sentence could be commuted to a life jail term.”

Sani appealed to Nigerians not to politicise or sensationalise the issue, noting that it has become clear that certain elements in the north were trying to introduce sectional sentiment into the matter.

He warned: “Al-Mustapha should be seen as a suspect and now a convict and not as a champion of any northern interest.

“All comments and appeal about him should be done from the points of objectivity, compassion, law or human rights.

Ethnicising the issue is not in the best interest of his case.”

He argued that although he also suffered imprisonment under the government that Al-Mustapha served, he would like the death sentence commuted to life imprisonment as death sentence has become obsolete in democracies around the world.

“We must be careful of playing into the hands of extremists who will argue that death sentence is legally justified.

“Mustapha’s role in the Abacha government was despicable. But we are in a democratic government. He should be pardoned in magnanimity as human beings,” Sani submitted.

Sani also advised that it will be in the interest of humanity to reconsider the issue of death sentence, stressing, “it may be misused in certain sections of the country where religious backwardness is a common thing.”

—Moyo Fabiyi