Just this last Saturday, the media aide of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu released a list that has stunned even the most cynical observers of our political theatre. It was the list of convicts granted presidential amnesty in the exercise of the powers of prerogative of mercy preserved by Section 175 of the 1999 Constitution. Broken into numbers and percentages, the pardons were distributed as follows: illicit drugs, 29.2%; illegal mining, 24%; homicide, 13.5%; hijacking, 5.8%; fraud and corruption, 12.3%; firearms, 2.3%; robbery and theft, 2.3%; kidnapping, 1.8%; human trafficking, 1.8% and others, 5.8%.

Yet, there is more to this list than meets the eye. What we see is more troubling than the act of seeing. A nationalist leader who stole, was jailed, and served his punishment was granted a pardon. A murderer whose conviction was affirmed by the Court of Appeal in December 2020 and whose lawyers stated their intention to move upstairs to the Supreme Court, and actually moved upstairs when she was suddenly told to go home and sin no more. A classic instance of the President ambushing the highest court in the land and throwing akamu in its face. Both Herbert Macaulay’s and Maryam Sanda’s pardons, including the pardon of the notorious Kelvin Oniarah Ezigbe, who kidnapped Mike Ozekhome SAN and his son, who went to deliver the agreed ransom in 2013, stand out as symbols of what is wrong with the exercise of presidential discretion in our country. 

Let us begin with Herbert Macaulay.

How, in the year 2025, does the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria grant a pardon to a man tried, convicted, and jailed by the colonial administration of the British Crown in 1913? What constitutional bridge connects 1913 to 2025? What sovereign thread ties the Colony of Lagos to the Federal Republic of Nigeria? If nothing legitimises theft, then this gesture raises unsettling questions about the moral logic of power and the sanctity of justice in our country. Beyond the moral disquiet lies a deeper constitutional absurdity. Section 175(1)(a) of the 1999 Constitution is clear. It empowers the President to grant a pardon, either free or subject to lawful conditions, to any person convicted of an offence created by an Act of the National Assembly. The Section does not extend to colonial-era offences. It cannot stretch its logic to acts done under imperial authority before Nigeria became a sovereign state.

Herbert Macaulay’s conviction was handed down by a colonial court of the Colony of Lagos, applying laws enacted by the British Crown. Our country, as we know it today, did not exist in 1913. The entity called the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria was proclaimed only in 1914, and even that was under British sovereignty. At the time, appeals from the Colony of Lagos went to the Supreme Court of Southern Nigeria, and ultimately to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. The West African Court of Appeal (WACA), which some may wrongly invoke here, was not even established until 1930. Macaulay’s conviction, therefore, belonged wholly to the imperial order of things. So, only one authority could have granted him mercy: the British Crown.

Our country, at independence in 1960, did not inherit the prerogative of mercy over pre-independence convictions. Our country inherited sovereignty, not an empire. Our country inherited institutions, not imperial authority. Our country was not a legal successor to the British Crown, it was a sovereign entity which emerged in 1960. Simpliciter. Specifically on this issue, and on no other, if my reading of Section 2 of the Independence Act of 1960 which provides that no Act of the United Kingdom Parliament extended to, or was deemed to have extended to, Nigeria as of 1st October 1960 is correct, it thus stands to reason that the colonial ordinance under which Herbert Macaulay was tried in 1913 was a UK piece of criminal colonial legislation which didn’t not extend to our country at independence on 1st October, 1960. Furthermore, Section 37 of the Interpretation Act, which provides that an Act of the National Assembly includes any instrument made before 1st October 1960 having the force of an Act, does not encompass a colonial ordinance promulgated by the Lagos Colony before the amalgamation of 1914. 

The Lagos colonial ordinance, therefore, cannot be said to possess the force or effect of an Act. In any term, the Lagos Colonial ordinance under which Herbert Macaulay was tried was repealed following the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1914. Effectively, it didn’t exist in fact and in law on 1st October, 1961. Some may also ask if Section 317 of the Constitution, which deals with transitional provisions, covers convictions predating independence. No. Section 317 protects acts involving the States and the Federation done under our law, not imperial prosecutions carried out by the Crown. To that extent, the pardon granted to Herbert Macaulay is legally untenable, constitutionally void, and historically incoherent. It blurs the line between sovereignty and sentiment. It transforms what should be a solemn constitutional power into a theatre of populism. The proper course for the President, had he been well advised, would have been to issue a declarative executive order recognising him and others arrested and imprisoned for similar causes as freedom fighters and national heroes. India, for instance, has long followed this model of declarative executive clemency. This so-called pardon, by contrast, dishonours rather than redeems the legacy of Herbert Macaulay.

Nonetheless, we must look beyond legality to see the politics of symbolism. Why would any president resurrect a century-old conviction that many citizens did not know of? What political logic drives this act of mercy? To re-canonise Macaulay, the nationalist long canonised? To rewrite his theft as patriotism? Or to draw moral equivalence between crime and nation-building. The grand old man was not jailed for political reasons. He was a nationalist, yes, but his 1913 conviction was for misappropriating trust funds. Even in colonial Lagos, it was a moral and legal crime. By choosing to pardon him, the President reopens the moral wound of corruption and dresses it up as nationalism. It tells citizens that crime, when wrapped in nationalist rhetoric, deserves a monument. It also tells our young that moral failure can be redeemed, not through repentance or restitution, but through state endorsement. That the lines between public virtue and private vice are negotiable. That theft can be forgiven if history smiles on you.

That is the tragedy of our times.

But there is a deeper danger here. Presidential power, under Section 175, is not ornamental. It is the highest moral function of the state. It demands prudence. It must be exercised to heal, not to offend justice. It must restore faith, not undermine it. When that power is used recklessly, it turns mercy into mockery.

And this is not just about Macaulay.

The inclusion of Maryam Sanda in the same list makes matters worse. Convicted for the murder of her husband, she had not exhausted her rights of appeal when the President’s mercy intervened. A case still within the judicial process was yanked out and buried under executive clemency. That act alone strikes at the heart of the rule of law. It tells the courts their work is dispensable. It tells victims that justice is a matter of presidential preference. It reduces due process to an inconvenience. And then there are the others: the drug peddlers, the human traffickers, the arms offenders, the miners of blood and greed. Seventy drug convicts. Sixty illegal miners. Ten hijackers. Four human traffickers. Twenty-five convicts of violent and capital offences. All set free under the broad, indiscriminate sweep of presidential mercy. These numbers are not random. They are a moral indictment.

When the presidential prerogative of mercy becomes a blanket of mockery, it covers both guilt and impunity. It creates the impression that justice can be negotiated, that the gravity of crime can be lightened by proximity to power or by the symbolism of the season. But, mercy must have a moral compass. It must respect the logic of justice. It must be restrained by the memory of victims and the future of the nation. To forgive without law is to wound the law itself. To pardon without justice is to delegitimise justice. This is why the President’s gesture is more troubling than it appears. It was meant, perhaps, to appear compassionate. But compassion without legality is sentiment. Sentiment without justice is chaos. What the Constitution grants is not the power to rewrite history. It is the power to temper the rigour of justice within the limits of the law. By reaching back into colonial history to pardon a man tried under the authority of the British Crown, the President has overreached his constitutional powers. He has extended mercy where sovereignty does not reach. And by pardoning convicts whose crimes undermine public morality and safety, he has weakened the moral fabric of the republic.

Mercy must ennoble justice, not empty it of meaning. Presidential amnesty should serve as the republic’s final act of grace; a gesture that reconciles the law with compassion. It must never become an act of historical revisionism or political convenience. When the state forgives without understanding the limits of its own authority, it mocks itself. When it extends its mercy beyond the bounds of its sovereignty, it becomes ridiculous. In the end, this pardon of Macaulay, of Sanda, of traffickers and killers reveals something deeper about our times. It shows how far we have drifted from the moral seriousness that a democracy requires. The act of mercy is not just a signature on paper. It is a moral contract between the state and its people. It must be guided by law, and by conscience. Otherwise, mercy becomes an instrument of spectacle.

That, truly, is what our country has witnessed.

Abdul Mahmud is a human rights attorney in Abuja