When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu granted clemency to more than 150 inmates across Nigeria in October 2025, it was hailed as an act of compassion and reform. Yet one omission, the case of Sunday Jackson, a farmer sentenced to death for defending himself, casts a moral shadow over an otherwise noble gesture.
Jackson’s ordeal began in 2015 on his farm in Adamawa State, when he was attacked by an armed herdsman. In a desperate act of survival, he disarmed his assailant and lived to tell the story. For that act of self-defence, he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death by hanging, a sentence upheld by the Supreme Court 10 years later.
