The Death Penalty in Nigeria: Issues and Remedies

From time immemorial, the philosophy of crime control which is loudly the punishment of crime has been as old as the history of man itself. Man has enthroned the idea of punishment both as a philosophical order and a disposition towards tackling the problem of crime in the past and in the preceding societies. As practiced in the modern world today, punishment is one element of the legal institution that is meted out when a crime is deemed committed and has been procedurally proven as such by a court of competent jurisdiction. This is done by designating certain acts and prohibiting them as crime with prescribed punishment for them. Although the punishment of crime has been a good economic value to the society, the justification for punishment as applied in Nigeria and other Nations of the world is in such a way that punishment is hardly handed out until a crime is committed which is largely implicated on the emergence of the criminal law.