The National Council of State has granted a state pardon to former governors Joshua Dariye and Jolly Nyame of Plateau and Taraba states, respectively, who are serving prison sentences for corruption.
The governors were among 159 prisoners pardoned by the council at a meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa in Abuja on Thursday.
Beneficiaries include a former military general and minister under the Sani Abacha regime, Tajudeen Olanrewaju; an army lieutenant colonel, Akiyode, who was an aide to General Abacha’s former deputy, Oladipo Diya; and all junior officers jailed for Gideon Orkar’s failed 1990 coup.
The full list of those pardoned is not immediately available.
According to a source from the Presidency, the two former governors were pardoned for reasons of health and age.
Nyame, 66, Governor of Taraba State from 1999 to 2007, was serving a 12-year sentence in Kuje Prison for embezzlement while in office. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction in February 2020.
Dariye, 64, who ruled Plateau between 1999 and 2007, was jailed for stealing N2 billion of public funds during his time as governor of Plateau state between 1999 and 2007.
The former governor, elected as a senator representing Plateau Central in the Senate in 2015, was sentenced in June 2018 but still completed his term from jail in June 2019.
In 2021, he led a partially successful appeal to the Supreme Court with a five-man court panel headed by Mary Odili, overturning his criminal misappropriation conviction in a unanimous decision.
The crimes for which he was acquitted only attracted two years in prison and thus had no impact on his total number of years in prison. The summit upheld the former governor’s conviction for criminal breach of trust, which attracted a 10-year prison sentence.
On June 12, 2018, Adebukola Banjoko of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja High Court convicted Mr. Dariye and originally sentenced him to 14 years in prison on charges of breach of trust and two years in prison for misappropriation. .
But after his appeal against the sentence, the Abuja Court of Appeal on November 16, 2018, commuted the prison sentence from 14 years to 10.
While the Court of Appeal upheld his conviction, it held that Section 416(2) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 prohibited the imposition of a maximum sentence on a first offender, such as the convicted.
The former governor had appealed to the Supreme Court.
Ejembi Emo, a member of the high court panel, noted that Mr. Dariye’s appeal was “partially successful” after his conviction on criminal misappropriation charges was overturned.
The State Council meeting was attended by former presidents and military heads of state, except for former President Olusegun Obasanjo who is in the United States on medical vacation.
The Council of State of Nigeria is an organ of the Government of Nigeria as stipulated in the Third Schedule Part 1B of the Constitution of 1999 (modified).
Council membership includes the President, who is President; the Vice President, who is the Vice President; all former Presidents of the Federation and all former Heads of Government of the Federation; all former Chief Justices of Nigeria; the President of the Senate; the Speaker of the House of Representatives; all the Governors of the states of the Federation; and the Attorney General of the Federation.
The Council has the power to:
(a) advise the President in the exercise of his powers with respect to:-
(i) national population census and compilation, publication and maintenance of records and other information related thereto;
(ii) prerogative of mercy;
(iii) conferral of national honors;
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(iv) the Independent National Electoral Commission (including the appointment of the members of that Commission);
(v) the National Council of the Judiciary (including the appointment of members, who are not ex officio members of that Council); Y
(vi) the National Population Commission (including the appointment of the members of said Commission); Y
(b) advise the President whenever requested on the maintenance of public order within the Federation or any part of it and on any other matter that the President may order.