In response to public demand, and in exercise of his prerogative of mercy power as guaranteed by the constitution, the Osun State Governor, Senator Ademola Jackson Adeleke, has granted outright pardon to a death-row inmate, Segun Olowookere, who has been waiting for the hangman’s noose for the past 10 years having been convicted for armed robbery.
Olowookere, widely known as “death-for-fowl” convict, was granted outright pardon alongside three other death-row convicts on the ground of good conduct while in prison, and in the spirit of Christmas.
The others are: Sunday Morakinyo, Tunde Olapade, and Demola Odeyemi.
Olowookere, then 17, was arrested in November 2010, and tried for conspiracy to commit armed robbery, robbery, and stealing. He was convicted and sentenced to death by an Osun State High Court on December 17, 2014.
However, Olowookere’s matter made headlines recently as his mother appeared in a podcast where she pleaded passionately for clemency for her son.
Consequent upon her plea, which went viral, other reports made waves on social media purporting that Olowokere was condemned to death for stealing chicken and eggs; and that having suffered for so long on the death row, he should be pardoned.
These caught the attention of Governor Adeleke who directed the state’s Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice to investigate Olowookere’s matter and make appropriate recommendations.
Freedom came the way of the condemned convicts as the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mallam Olawale Rasheed, issued a statement announcing the pardon of Olowookere, Morakinyo, and 51 other inmates.
“In line with the recommendations of the State Advisory Council on Prerogative of Mercy, Governor Ademola Adeleke has exercised the prerogative of mercy towards 53 convicts serving various convictions within the Nigerian Correctional Service,” Rasheed said in the statement.
While six condemned persons were granted outright pardon on health ground, one Ojekunle Timothy, who had spent ten years on death row, had his death sentence commuted to 15 years.
The six condemned persons now pardoned outrightly on health ground include: Oluwafemi Fagbemi, Bewaji Sunday, Amehin George, Ayomide Arulogun, Taiwo Oluwatobi Stephen and Abubakar Abdulazeez.
