Policeman sentenced to death in Nigeria for killing a lawyer

A Nigerian court sentenced Monday a police officer to death for shooting and killing a lawyer in the commercial hub of Lagos. Many applauded the rare sentence as a punitive measure against rampant cases of police abuse.

After nearly a year, Justice Ibironke Harrison of the Lagos High Court found police officer Drambi Vandi guilty of one count of murder of Bolanle Raheem, who was pregnant at the time when she was shot dead Christmas Day last year. Local reports said Raheem was in her early forties.

Vandi shot the lawyer after her vehicle in the town of Ajah in Lagos failed to stop at a checkpoint, local media reported at the time.

He had denied opening fire at Raheem, but one of his colleagues who testified during the hearing confirmed hearing the gunshot. Vandi has a right to appeal the ruling.

“You will be hanged by the neck till you are dead,” the judge told the police officer who had pleaded not guilty.

The death sentence was lauded by many in Africa’s most populous country where allegations of abuse and extrajudicial killings against the police are rife. On social media, people hoped the sentence would send a warning signal to erring police officers who often evade justice.

Death sentences in Nigeria are common but no police officer has received such sentence in the country in many years.

Nigeria has thousands of pending death sentences. Executions rarely go into effect as they require approvals by powerful state governors. Only two warrants for death sentences were carried out since 1999, according to Inibehe Effiong, a Nigerian human rights lawyer.

There were questions about whether the Lagos Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu would approve the police officer’s execution.

Authorities have been under increasing pressure to hold security forces accountable after the deadly nationwide protests against police brutality in 2020.

While many in Nigeria praised the death sentence, some argued it should be abolished.

"The death penalty is inhumane, amounts to vengeance and prone to error. There is no evidence that it has achieved the objective of creating a deterrence to crime," said Okechukwu Nwanguma, who leads the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre which advocates for police reforms in Nigeria.

By Chinedu Asadu, AP

NNPC becomes sole petrol importer in Nigeria as forex shortages hit rivals

Nigeria's national oil firm NNPC Ltd has again become the sole importer of petrol because local private firms are unable to obtain foreign currency, its chief executive said on Monday, four months after imports were opened up to private players.

Mele Kyari also said the government had not reintroduced a decades-old petrol subsidy scrapped at the end of May, despite concerns from investors of a de facto return as pump prices have not moved since July, despite a more than 30% rise in oil prices.

Africa's largest oil exporter, Nigeria, imports nearly all its fuel as it does not refine nearly enough to meet the demand of its 200 million citizens. In recent years, it has swapped crude for fuel, depriving it of a source of U.S. dollars.

Opening up petrol imports to the private sector was part of reforms by President Bola Tinubu to wean the country off fuel subsidies.

Some fuel companies began imports in July but Kyari told an energy conference that they were now struggling to get foreign currencies to import petrol, known as premium motor spirit (PMS).

"We are the only company importing PMS into the country," he said.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Tinubu, Kyari dismissed the concerns that a partial fuel subsidy had been restored.

"We are recovering our full cost from the products that we import. No subsidy whatsoever," he said.

Petrol is widely used by households and small businesses to power generators because millions of Nigerians are not connected to the national electricity grid.

Nigeria is in the grips of foreign currency shortages, which have seen the naira weaken to record lows on the parallel market. The new central bank governor has said that policymakers faced a nearly $7 billion backlog in foreign exchange demand. 

By MacDonald Dzirutwe, Reuters

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Opposition claims president Tinubu forged diploma

Nigeria’s main opposition said Thursday it will present new evidence to support its court challenge seeking to overturn this year's presidential election, saying it can show the declared winner provided faked academic credentials to authorities.

President Bola Tinubu forged a diploma from an American university that he presented to Nigeria’s election commission before the February vote and should be removed from office, first runner-up Atiku Abubakar and his lawyer alleged in a briefing with reporters. They cited records obtained from the university in a U.S. court hearing and shared with The Associated Press.

Abubakar previously has argued Tinubu should not be president because the election commission did not follow due process in announcing the winner and Tinubu was not qualified to run, citing allegations of dual citizenship and of a criminal indictment in the United States.

Tinubu has denied those claims. He did not comment on the new allegation, but his spokesman denied it. “A man cannot forge the academic records he possesses,” Temitope Ajayi, Tinubu’s media aide, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The challenge is being closely watched by many Nigerians following a divisive election that saw Tinubu win with less than 50% of the votes, a first in Nigeria’s history.

Abubakar is one of three candidates who are in court seeking to void Tinubu’s election victory.

Kalu Kalu, Abubakar’s lawyer, said they are set to present “fresh evidence” in the case pending before Nigeria's Supreme Court.

“A party at fault cannot be allowed to enjoy the fruit of his illegality,” Kalu said.

No presidential election in Nigeria has ever been voided.

In advancing his court challenge, Abubakar secured an order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois directing Chicago State University, which Tinubu attended, to release his academic records.

In a transcript of a deposition this week given to AP by Abubakar’s lawyers, and which has not been made available by the court, Caleb Westberg, registrar of the university, confirmed the school “has the original record of Bola Tinubu." But he said he could not confirm the authenticity of the diploma that the Nigerian leader presented to the election commission indicating he graduated in 1979.

“We’re not qualified to verify whether this document (the diploma) is authentic, given that it is not in our possession,” Westberg said.

Asked to confirm that the school “has no record of issuing” the diploma in question, Westberg responded, "Correct."

Alexandre de Gramont, who represented Abubakar in U.S. court, said in a statement that the team got “virtually everything we sought” after a “hard-fought battle to obtain the educational records … which Mr. Tinubu’s lawyers vigorously opposed at every step.”

It is not the first time that a Nigerian leader has been accused of forgery. Muhammadu Buhari, Tinubu’s predecessor, faced similar allegations though they were never proven to be true.

ABC News

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