The presidency has explained the reasons President Bola Ahmed Tinubu granted presidential pardon and clemency to 175 Nigerians and foreigners, including Illegal miners, white-collar convicts, remorseful drug offenders, convicted murderers and many other high-profile offenders.
Some of the high-profile names, such as Ken Saro-Wiwa, Major General Mamman Vatsa, Maryam Sanda, and Professor Magaji Garba, are in a move the Presidency says is driven by fairness, justice, national healing, and compassion.
According to a statement by Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, the decision reflects Tinubu’s resolve to “heal old wounds, correct historical injustices, and promote national unity.” The pardon also extended posthumously to Sir Herbert Macaulay, who was wrongly sanctioned by British colonial authorities in 1913 for alleged misappropriation.
“Illegal miners, white-collar convicts, remorseful drug offenders, foreigners, Major General Mamman Vatsa, Major Akubo, Professor Magaji Garba, capital offenders such as Maryam Sanda, Ken Saro Wiwa, and the other Ogoni Eight were among the 175 convicts and former convicts who received President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s mercy on Thursday,” Onanuga said.
The statement explained that most beneficiaries were selected based on good conduct, remorse, age, ill health, or reformation through education or skill acquisition. “President Tinubu granted clemency to most of them based on the reports that the convicts had shown remorse and good conduct,” the Presidency said. “He forgave some due to old age, the acquisition of new vocational skills, or enrolment in the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).”
Among the symbolic gestures was the posthumous pardon of Vatsa, executed in 1986 for an alleged coup plot, and Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Eight, hanged in 1995 under the Abacha regime. Onanuga said the move was part of Tinubu’s broader goal to “reconcile the past with the present and move Nigeria toward a united and humane future.”
The Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, chaired by Attorney-General Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), recommended the clemency list, which was later approved during the Council of State meeting chaired by Tinubu.
Of the 175 pardoned individuals, two inmates and 15 former convicts (11 of them deceased) received full pardons, 82 inmates were granted clemency, 65 had their sentences commuted, and seven death row inmates had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment.
Prominent living beneficiaries include Farouk Lawan, convicted for corruption; Professor Magaji Garba, former Vice-Chancellor of Federal University, Gusau; and Maryam Sanda, sentenced to death in 2020 for killing her husband. The Presidency said Sanda’s clemency was granted “after appeals citing her remorse, good behaviour, and the need to care for her two children.”
Others granted pardon include illegal miners, drug traffickers, and white-collar offenders who showed genuine reform during incarceration or engaged in rehabilitation and education programmes. Senator Ikra Aliyu Bilbis has also been tasked with overseeing the rehabilitation and empowerment of all individuals pardoned for illegal mining.
The Presidency clarified that the exercise, executed under Section 175 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), was the product of “thorough review and consultation, not sentiment.” It aligns with Tinubu’s broader justice reform and custodial decongestion strategy aimed at making Nigeria’s penal system more humane and rehabilitative.
With this sweeping act of clemency, President Tinubu’s administration seeks to balance mercy with accountability — offering redemption to the repentant, correcting historical wrongs, and reaffirming Nigeria’s commitment to justice rooted in humanity.
