Indonesia demonstrated on Wednesday, April 29 that it is a sovereign nation and does not need an international body like the United Nations (UN) to interfere in its affairs.
Eight convicted foreign drug smugglers – including four Nigerians, Martin Anderson, Okwudili Oyatanze, Jaminu Abashin, and Sylvester Obiekwe – were executed by firing squad.
Their execution confirmed the resolve of President Joko Widodo that the country will not compromise on illegal drugs which cause anguish and devastation.
I was not surprised, despite the outrage it created around the globe after pleas from countries whose citizens were on death row for clemency fell on deaf ears.
Watching Widodo field questions from CNN Correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, in January this year, and his insistence that there will be “no compromise” when it comes to applying the death penalty, I knew that countries appealing to him to soft pedal were wasting their time.
Prisoners from Australia, Brazil, Nigeria, and Indonesia were executed on the island of Nusa Kambangan, off the southern coast of Java.
But the authorities granted a stay of execution to Mary Jane Veloso, a 30-year-old Filipino, after her country’s government requested her assistance in a human trafficking case involving a woman who surrendered to the police.
Shortly after taking office in October 2014, Widodo declared that Indonesia was facing “a national emergency” of drug abuse, and rejected 64 clemency appeals from drug convicts on death row, mainly foreigners.
Widodo had said Indonesia has a right to exercise its drug laws, hence the government rejected appeals to cancel the executions, including appeals from Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations.
Recently, Widodo reeled out astonishing figures that suggested that about 4.5 million Indonesians need to be rehabilitated due to illegal drug use. He also said between 40 and 50 young Indonesians die each day as a result.
His argument is that applying a no-compromise, punitive approach is sine qua non to combating the state of emergency which the figure of drug cases in Indonesia represents.
The executions, no doubt, angered some of Indonesia’s largest aid donors, including Australia and the European Union (EU) as well as the countries where the convicted drug prisoners hailed from.
On Wednesday, April 29, Australia announced that it would withdraw its ambassador to Indonesia. Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the deaths of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran as a dark moment in Australia’s diplomatic relations with Indonesia.
On the same day, the Nigerian government demanded from the Indonesian government the repatriation of the remains of the executed Nigerians to be buried in their communities.
The government expressed commitment to the fight against drugs, and warned all Nigerians to desist from drug trafficking and other offences that attract maximum punishment in several countries of the world.
There are a lot of lessons to learn from the executions. First, it must be stated that he who goes to equity must go with clean hands.
The claim by relations of some of the executed prisoners that Indonesian judges demanded bribe to give lighter sentences shows that a bigger ailment called corruption is being treated with kid’s gloves in Indonesia.
The least that Widodo would do is ignore these weighty allegations by the lawyers and relations of the executed prisoners, like the Australians, Chan and Sukumaran; and the Nigerian, Nwolise, whose widow alleged that some judges demanded bribe for lighter sentences.
Second, and more significantly, the case of another Nigerian convict who did not have legal representation to appeal his conviction should be looked into by both the Nigerian government and the international community.
The only way the Indonesian government would have justified his killing was if all the legal avenues needed to prove his case beyond reasonable doubt were fully explored. Executing him without giving him the opportunity to fully defend himself is against all natural and legal justice.
The third is the case of the Bazilian, Rodrigo Gularte, known for suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as a teenager, both of which made it necessary for the Indonesian law not to prosecute him.
Widodo has the right to implement the laws of Indonesia but that should not be done in careless ways, in a rush, and at the detriment of the right of convicts and their relations.
For sometime now, Prisoner Transfer Agreements (PTA) and other bilateral means of safeguarding the interest of Nigerians have dominated discussion at the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) without much action. But with what has happened in Indonesia, the time has come for the government to leave the kitchen if it is afraid of the heat.
Perhaps, one of the surest ways of securing the lives of Nigerians convicted abroad for crime is to fall back on the PTA, rather than the wishful thinking called clemency.
But it is important we learn to live right wherever we find ourselves. Drug matters are too serious to be treated with levity, and we should activate laws regarding those involved in hard drug business in Nigeria, either as a transit camp or consumer haven.
It is high time Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) got serious. Indonesia has shown that laws are meant to be obeyed and not just to serve as a document.
No society where the rule of law is repudiated makes progress. Part of the reason Nigeria finds it difficult to realise its full potential is because citizens collaborate with even foreigners to break the law.
This is one area in which countries look down on Nigeria. They know that when the chips are down, after all the noise making, nothing will happen when they break our law.
