Nigeria Prison Service is recruiting special duty officers, otherwise known as hangmen.

Nigeria Prison Service is recruiting special duty officers, otherwise known as hangmen.Saturday Punch investigation showed that the recruitment started about four years ago when it was discovered that the service had only two hangmen. Since the beginning of the exercise, the number has risen to about 12, with Lagos State having at least four hangmen. It was, however, gathered that 10 of the new hangmen were yet to master the intricacies involved in executing condemned convicts by hanging. Saturday Punch gathered from a reliable source in the NPS that for now, the men, who were also trained as general duty officers, would be involved in routine prison work until their skills were needed. He said, “We see the reluctance of the state executives to sign the death warrants as a temporary issue. They are confused for now and see the death penalty as a political issue. We believe that as democracy progresses, they will see the need to follow due process.”Saturday Punch also found out that there were about 300 inmates on death row nationwide, out of which over 100 were in Lagos State. A senior official in one of the prisons in the state told our correspondent that the warrants for the execution of some of the death row inmates had been on the state governor’s table since 2000.He said the immediate past governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, did not sign any and Governor Babatunde Fashola has not done so too. The source added, “But Tinubu commuted some of the death row inmates sentences to life imprisonment.”The source said the recruitment of more hangmen was a routine procedure pending when the governors decided to sign warrants. He said, “When you are called to execute an inmate, it must be done precisely. There is no room for mistake. The person must die at once; not that the person will not die and you will have to do it again. So, there is a need to get people who are well trained to handle this job.”Explaining further on the process of execution, the source said, “There is no big deal about it. You know that only a few people in the service know these hangmen. To others, they are just colleagues. It is for their safety and state of mind. So, that is why a hangman will not operate in a state as general duty officers. If a time comes for them to perform their duties, a date will be fixed and the headquarters in Abuja will invite the person or persons they want to use.“Nobody, except the state comptroller will know the real reason and he would have told the person. From Abuja, the person will go to the place of assignment. It won’t take more than three days. Two days to set up and test run, and the D-day. He will come back and none of his colleagues will know.”
The NPS spokesman, Kayode Odeyemi could not be reached on the telephone, but the Lagos State NPS spokesman, Ope Fatinikun, confirmed the presence of the hangmen in the command. He, however, said he had no idea of their identity or number.Fatinikun also admitted that there were a large number of death row inmates in the prisons in the state, explaining, “We have six females and 101 in the maximum prison. But some of them are still fighting for their lives at the Appeal Court and Supreme Court. But many of them are awaiting the governor’s signature.”