There are times when mercy heals a nation and there are times when it wounds it. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s recent presidential pardon, which freed Maryam Sanda, convicted for the murder of her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, falls painfully into the latter. It is one of those moments that force us to ask: Whose justice is Nigeria really serving?
Maryam Sanda’s story is not forgotten. In 2017, she stabbed her husband to death in cold blood. In 2020, a court found her guilty and sentenced her to death by hanging. Justice, it seemed, had been served, not out of cruelty, but to reaffirm that no one, no matter how privileged, should take a human life and escape accountability.
But six years later, Sanda walks free, redeemed not by repentance before the nation, but by a presidential pardon inked in the quiet comfort of power. Her release, defended by Presidential aide Bayo Onanuga, was justified on the grounds of “good behavior” and “remorse.” But such justification sounds hollow in a country where countless inmates without names or influence languish in jail, unseen, unheard, and unforgiven.
Let’s call it what it is, mercy in Nigeria is not a virtue, it is a privilege. It bends easily toward the powerful and turns its back on the poor. For every Maryam Sanda who gets freedom, there are hundreds of voiceless prisoners wasting away for petty crimes.
If mercy has become a tool of politics, then it has ceased to be mercy at all.
When compassion becomes selective, it becomes corruption of the soul.
This is not about vengeance; it is about fairness. A justice system that can free a convicted murderer under the banner of mercy while others rot for stealing food has lost its moral compass. It sends a dangerous message, that crime, if well-connected, can be forgiven; but poverty is unforgivable.
Think of young Chidinma Ojukwu, accused of killing Super TV CEO, Usifo Ataga. Her story mirrors a growing tragedy among Nigerian youths, bright lives gone astray in a society that teaches survival before morality. She, too, once had a future. But murder erases sympathy. If we begin to free killers under the disguise of mercy, then what future are we building for the next generation?
Mercy should uplift a society’s conscience, not undermine its justice.
It should comfort victims, not torment them.
Beyond Maryam Sanda’s case lies a larger question… who decides when justice ends and mercy begins? The Constitution grants the President the prerogative of mercy, but that sacred power is not meant to mock the grief of families or erase the finality of justice. When wielded without moral scrutiny, that power becomes a weapon not of compassion, but of control.
One thing is clear, President Tinubu may not know every name on that list of 172 pardoned convicts. Some were likely inserted through the backdoor, a quiet abuse of privilege dressed in legal language. It’s not the first time, and it may not be the last, unless we redefine the ethics of mercy in governance.
For the family of Bilyaminu Bello, this pardon is a second funeral, a reminder that in Nigeria, justice is temporary and mercy is permanent for the privileged. Their loss is relived, their pain renewed, their faith in the system fractured again.
A nation that repeatedly turns mercy into a weapon against justice will one day discover that both have lost their meaning. Because when justice becomes negotiable, and mercy becomes selective, the soul of a nation bleeds, quietly, irreversibly.
