Nigeria’s Amnesty of the Powerful: Who Will Pardon The Poor?

Prince Chris Azor

In the grand theatre of Nigeria’s politics, irony is the main script and citizens its unwilling audience. We have mastered the art of laughing through our tearsb(Suffering and Smiling) because crying endlessly would drown us. Recently, the federal government announced a sweeping amnesty for a number of convicts, including drug traffickers, financial criminals, and violent offenders, in what was described as an act of compassion and prison decongestion.

But compassion in Nigeria is often selective, and justice, as it stands, wears designer glasses. This is the same country where a hungry youth can languish in jail for stealing bread while those who stole the national treasury receive State honours, or better still, Presidential Prerogative of Mercy. What we have witnessed is less an act of grace and more a reflection of our deep moral confusion, a nation that punishes poverty but pardons power.

French philosopher Michel Foucault once wrote that “the state’s power is visible most clearly in the way it punishes.” By that measure, Nigeria’s governance architecture reveals not just the weakness of its institutions, but the bias of its mercy. The recent Presidential pardon does not symbolize justice tempered with humanity; it represents privilege dressed in the robes of forgiveness.

And while the gates of mercy swing open for the powerful, the gates of suffering remain locked for the poor. Inflation now hovers above 24 percent, food inflation approaches 30 percent, and the naira exchanges at about ₦1,600 to a dollar. The newly approved ₦70,000 minimum wage amounts to less than $45 per month, barely $1.45 a day. This is well below the World Bank’s poverty threshold of $2.15. In other words, the Nigerian worker has become officially poorer than the poorest of the poor.

John Rawls, in his seminal Theory of Justice, argued that “justice is the first virtue of social institutions.” Yet, Nigeria’s institutions appear to have misplaced both justice and virtue. The majority of our citizens live below the poverty line — 54 percent nationally, and a shocking 75 percent in rural Communities. Families are skipping meals, youths are unemployed, and insecurity has turned everyday life into a survival exercise. Amid this, the State finds time and energy to pardon convicts but none to alleviate hunger, homelessness, or despair.

This is governance without empathy. It is the cruel paradox of a country where forgiveness is monetized and citizenship is criminalized. The government calls it a humanitarian gesture. For Civil Society it is a moral scandal. As Amartya Sen noted in Development as Freedom, “poverty is not just lack of income, but the deprivation of capability.” When people cannot eat, learn, work, or live in safety, no amount of fiscal arithmetic can justify the silence of leadership.

Nigeria’s poor do not need presidential amnesty; they need economic justice. They need the activation of the National Social Protection Policy in every State, not token palliatives wrapped in politics. They need jobs, not jargons; opportunities, not excuses. When the government pardons drug traffickers but cannot feed displaced families in the North or unemployed graduates in the South, it sends a dangerous message that morality is negotiable and crime has a price tag.

This contradiction corrodes national trust. Alexis de Tocqueville warned that “the health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.” Today, Nigerian citizens function mainly as survivors, not participants. Civil Society, therefore, bears a historical responsibility to speak truth to power, to remind the State that governance is not about saving friends but serving people.

Our economy, meanwhile, continues to suffocate the common man. Food prices have tripled, transport costs doubled, and rent has become an exercise in prayer. Even the naira appears to faint and revive at every policy pronouncement. Yet, official rhetoric remains upbeat. We are told that “better days are coming.” The tragedy is that these days seem to be coming by road, and the roads, like the promises, are broken.

If this is mercy, then it is without justice, and conscience. The government must redirect compassion toward social investment, not selective absolution. True leadership pardons the hungry with food, not the guilty with decree. It rehabilitates the vulnerable, not the powerful. It builds institutions that serve, not systems that shield.

Nigeria stands today at the intersection of forgiveness and failure. The prisons may be open, but the people are still imprisoned by hunger, fear, and hopelessness. The rich are free, but the poor remain sentenced to poverty. As Desmond Tutu once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

It is time to choose the side of justice, the side of humanity. The real amnesty Nigeria needs is not for convicts, but for citizens. Amnesty from hunger, joblessness, insecurity, and neglect. Mercy must be redefined as access to dignity, opportunity, and peace. Until then, the question remains painfully relevant: who will pardon the poor?

Prince Chris Azor is a Citizen advocate and President International Peace and Civic Responsibility Centre (IPCRC)

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