80-yr-old murder convict, 204 others freed in Kebbi, Sokoto

An 80-year-old woman, convicted on murder charges, has been discharged and released from Kebbi prisons. The octogenarian, Fatima Abubakar, who had spent nine years in prisons, was among those whose cases were positively reviewed by the Presidential Committee on Prisons Reform and Decongestion during the committee’s visit to Kebbi and Sokoto states. She was discharged […]

An 80-year-old woman, convicted on murder charges, has been discharged and released from Kebbi prisons.
The octogenarian, Fatima Abubakar, who had spent nine years in prisons, was among those whose cases were positively reviewed by the Presidential Committee on Prisons Reform and Decongestion during the committee’s visit to Kebbi and Sokoto states.
She was discharged after the committee considered the frailty of her health. The committee chairman and Chief Judge of the FCT High Court, Justice Ishaq Bello, ordered that Fatima be handed over to her son after her release.
While a total of 135 inmates were released from the prisons in Kebbi State, 70 others regained their freedom from ‎Sokoto prison.
Aside Fatima, a 70-year-old man, Mohammad Sarkin Aski, who was convicted on charges of witchcraft in Kebbi, regained freedom after the committee reviewed his case and noted that he should not have been convicted in the first place.
Justice Bello observed that there is no law that can sustain charges of witchcraft and that it should not have been tried in the first place.
Another 61-year-old man, Abubakar Aliyu, initially sentenced to death for armed robbery but was later commuted to life imprisonment and later 25 years imprisonment, was released after spending 12 years in prison. However, a dismissed police officer of about 70 years of age was not lucky as he was told to serve out his sentence.
He was given a life sentence after he was said to have killed his wife because another man had carnal knowledge of her.
After killing her, he was said to have put her corpse in a sack and dumped it in a gutter to be washed away by flood. The woman was said to have had 11 children for him before she was killed‎.