In August 2018 when the birthday photo of a frail-looking 100-year-old Celestine Egbunuche, held on death row at the Enugu maximum prison,Accused of hiring people to kidnap and kill a man over an alleged land dispute in Imo State, his hometown, the centenarian was detained in June 2000. He was eventually convicted andThrough the campaign led by not-for-profit Global Society for Anti-corruption , Pa Egbunuche was eventually freed a few weeks later. His son remained behind bars.
The data is as of December 14, 2020, and it was obtained in confidence through prison record officials. There is no real-time official database breakdown of the nation’s inmates, and so the exact figure as of the time of this report could not be established. However, the interior minister said at a public event that the figure was about 3,008 as of August.
At the summit of this list are prisons in Rivers which held 430 inmates on death row. This was followed by Lagos with 360 condemned to death. Neighbouring Ogun housed 344 inmates. Enugu where Paul Egbunuche is still being held on death row had 279. Delta had 252, Plateau 230, and Kano 153. Rights group Amnesty International had said Nigeria has the highest death-row population in sub-Saharan Africa,that between 2007 and 2017, there were seven executions in the country with the last one taking place in 2016.