The Attorney General of the Federation, Mallam Abubakar Malami, on Wednesday gave reasons why convicted Boko Haram members could not be executed.
Disclosing this at the launch of amnesty’s report on Global Death Sentences and Executions 2015, in Abuja, Malami said the law under which the convicted members of the sect were tried never prescribed death sentence.
He said: “Terrorists in Nigeria are tried under the Terrorism Prevention Act, which does not carry death penalty. That is why even those Boko Haram members, who have been convicted cannot be executed because the maximum sentence prescribed by the law is life sentence.”
Pledging to work with Amnesty International in a bid to bring an end to execution of convicted criminals in Nigeria if the international human rights body proposed the bill, Malami said, “studies have shown that death penalty has not stopped people from committing crimes.”
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