The Senate’s recent decision to endorse the death penalty as punishment for banditry and kidnapping has drawn criticism from various quarters, including human rights advocates, legal practitioners, and community leaders, who argue that such a measure will not address the root causes of these crimes.
Nigeria continues to grapple with multiple security challenges—most notably banditry and kidnapping—which have resulted in significant economic damage and the loss of countless lives.
Just days ago, the Senate passed for second reading a bill seeking to classify kidnapping and hostage-taking as acts of terrorism, enforce the death penalty for offenders, and empower security agencies to trace and confiscate assets connected to the crimes.
The bill, titled, Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Amendment Bill, 2025 (SB.969), was sponsored by the Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, representing Ekiti Central, and co-sponsored by 108 other senators.
Leading the debate, Bamidele said the amendment was a direct legislative response to one of Nigeria’s most devastating security threats.
He noted that kidnapping had transformed from isolated acts into a ‘commercialised, militarised and well-coordinated national menace,’ that has claimed thousands of lives, crippled businesses, rendered families bankrupt and stretched security agencies beyond capacity.
“The bill seeks to designate kidnapping and hostage-taking as acts of terrorism, prescribe the death penalty without option of fine and empower security agencies to dismantle kidnapping networks through asset tracing, forfeiture, intelligence-led operations and stronger inter-agency coordination,” he explained.
He added that the terror designation would give law enforcement broader prosecutorial powers under the counter-terrorism frameworks, enabling faster pre-trial procedures and the disruption of funding chains that feed the criminal enterprise.
Senators across party lines endorsed the bill, describing it as urgent, overdue and necessary to save lives.
The Senate Chief Whip, Tahir Monguno, in his contribution, commended the reform-oriented elements of the bill, noting that it emphasises the training and retraining of lawyers through continuing legal education to ensure they remain aligned with modern technological realities.
He further highlighted the expanded powers granted to the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee, which will now be able to more effectively investigate professional misconduct and exercise broader regulatory authority.
However, even though the majority of the Senate and Nigerians are in support of the move, there are dissenting views.
Prominent among the antagonists of the proposed law from Senate is a renowned human rights scholar at Bournemouth University, United Kingdom and former United Nations Senior Human Rights Envoy, Prof. Uchenna Emelonye.
He criticised the Senate’s move to amend the Anti-Terrorism (Prevention) Act to impose death penalty for kidnapping and related offences, warning that the proposal contradicts Nigeria’s international human rights commitments and undermines global normative standards.
He noted that the proposal runs contrary to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) ratified by the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1993 and the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, the world’s primary instrument advocating for the abolition of capital punishment.
“Although Nigeria has not ratified the Optional Protocol, it remains bound by the ICCPR’s restrictive standards on the use of the death penalty.
“Expanding the death penalty is a regressive, ineffective and legally questionable response to kidnapping.
“This amendment places Nigeria in direct conflict with international human rights jurisprudence and threatens to reverse decades of global progress toward ending capital punishment,” he told our correspondent.
He was of the view that death penalty does not deter crime, as he emphasised that there was no credible evidence to support the argument that capital punishment deters kidnapping or violent crimes.
“Nigeria cannot hope to deter crimes through executions. What is needed is investment in policing, intelligence and justice-sector reforms, not a return to punitive excesses. There is a plethora of evidence to show that the ‘error rates’ in Nigeria’s criminal justice system is very high.
“So, while the country continues to struggle with torture-based confessions, inadequate investigations and limited legal representation, expanding capital punishment in such a context, increases the danger of wrongful executions and the risk of irrevocable miscarriages of justice, in violation of the ICCPR’s due-process guarantees.
“The Senate proposal to reintroduce death penalty into our body of laws would set Nigeria’s trajectory backwards and place it among the retentionist jurisdictions where capital punishment remains entrenched, rather than aligning with the growing global abolitionist consensus on human rights-based justice systems.
“African countries that have abolished the death penalty, including Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia and the Central African Republic, are not experiencing higher levels of kidnapping, demonstrating that abolition does not fuel violent crimes and that capital punishment offers no meaningful deterrent effect,” he submitted.
He urged members of the National Assembly to reconsider the proposed amendment, and instead, pursue rights-centric, effective and evidence-based strategies to address kidnapping, such as enhanced community policing, targeted socio-economic interventions, strengthened criminal-justice institutions and decisive action to curb the proliferation of small arms and ammunition that continues to fuel insecurity across the country.
Apart from those who have raised human rights concerns, like Prof Emelonye, there are others in the mould the Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, who would want the government to address the root causes of kidnapping and banditry.
Sheikh Gumi had argued that the core issues causing violence are inequality, poverty, marginalization and a lack of opportunities.
He also does not believe that the death sentence would solve the problem of banditry and kidnapping, rather, it would worsen the situation.
He had equally advocated for dialogue and social investment, suggesting that bandits are ever willing to disarm if they receive fair treatment and reintegration opportunities, rather than outright punitive measures.
There are also those who have raised the issue of effectiveness and disparity as the basis of their opposition to the proposed law.
People driving this argument are mostly social media commentators, who have raised questions about the legal system’s fairness, pointing out disparities in punishment for different crimes and suggesting that severe penalties don’t always address the underlying issues of crime effectively.
Even within the Senate, there were some internal disagreements on the procedure for passing the death penalty amendment, with Senators like Adams Oshiomhole, objecting to the ruling on a voice vote, arguing that matters of life and death should not be treated hurriedly.
However, in spite the obvious opposition to the proposed law, the general consensus among the lawmakers and many state governors and South-West leaders has been strongly in favour of death sentence as a necessary deterrent to combat the severe security crisis ravaging the nation.
