Capital punishment for kidnappers

It is gratifying that the senate has agreed to begin a process for the enactment of a law that will prescribe capital punishment for kidnapping across the country. In a motion entitled “National wakeup call” the senate seeks to end a national opprobrium that has become endemic because of legal lacuna assailing prosecution. If this […]

It is gratifying that the senate has agreed to begin a process for the enactment of a law that will prescribe capital punishment for kidnapping across the country.
In a motion entitled “National wakeup call” the senate seeks to end a national opprobrium that has become endemic because of legal lacuna assailing prosecution.
If this commendable bill falls true it would be one of the best legislative endeavour to be enunciated by the eighth National Assembly.
The next and a more exigent bill would be on corruption or stealing of public funds. Whereas the last president attempted to create a suspicious dichotomy between stealing and corruption, no translucent mind would buy into such dichotomy.
Corruption has assailed the past, the present and the future of Nigeria perhaps more than any other known infraction since independence. It has placed Nigeria permanently on global hall of infamy. It has significantly reduced life expectancy, caused a geometric scale of Internally Displaced Persons, escalated unemployment rate and blighted the potential of Nigeria to join the comity of developed nations.
The NAAS will engrave its legacy in gold if corruption is made to attract capital punishment.
However the bill must seek to graduate punishment according to the quantum of the perpetrated sleaze.
Any sleaze in the region between half a billion naira and one billion should attract death penalty. One hundred million naira to Five hundred million naira to attract life jail, one hundred thousand naira to five hundred thousand to attract ten years imprisonment and one naira to one hundred naira to attract one year imprisonment.
Bukola Ajisola, Victoria Island, Lagos.