The Adamawa High Court judge reasoned that for failing to flee the scene after gaining advantage of his attacker and that he confessed that he indeed killed the herdsman, Jackson must also be put to death by hanging, a sentence that the Supreme Court of Nigeria upheld in the March 7 ruling.
In their first 2025 CBCN Communique, Nigeria’s Catholic Bishops fault the death penalty, saying, “We reaffirm the stand of the Catholic Church that capital punishment is unacceptable (CCC2267).”
“We therefore make a passionate appeal to the President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu especially in the light of the Jubilee Year of Hope, to grant pardon to Mr. Sunday Jackson,” CBCN members say in the communique shared with ACI Africa on Friday, March 14.
In appealing for Presidential pardon to relieve Jackson of the death penalty, Nigeria’s Catholic Bishops invoke the traditional spirit of the a Jubilee Year. They explain, “The Jubilee Year as enshrined in the Book of Leviticus 25 was a time of restoration, freedom and renewal. It was a time when debts were forgiven, captives were released, and the land was given rest.”
“The Jubilee of Hope invites us to be agents of renewal, arising from restoration and freedom,” CBCN members say.
“We are called to be the light that dispels the darkness hovering over our land, which necessarily begins with each of us, from our homes to our Churches, from our workplaces to our government institutions,” they add in their communique following the March 8-14 Plenary Assembly at the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN) Resource Centre, Durumi Abuja.
The Catholic Bishops say that the desire for a “new” Nigeria must involve commitment to truth, justice and love, and add, “We, therefore, call on all to be true to our worship of God, eschewing external religiosity and competition geared towards religious superiority or supremacy.”
After Nigeria’s Supreme Court ruling to uphold Jackson’s capital punishment, other religious and civil societies have faulted the decision, and advocated for clemency.
For instance, a Wednesday, March 12 report, the Nineteen Northern States and FCT Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) appeal to Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa State to pardon Jackson “in the exercise of his constitutional duties and the Prerogative of Mercy, and in the spirit of peace building and reconciliation, which both the state and the nation now desperately need.”
“Mr Sunday Jackson has truly been subjected to the excruciating pain of waiting for death in the midst of the shadow of death by the grave travesty of the misinterpretation of Section 23 of the Adamawa State Penal Code Laws and the unnecessary prolonged trial that lasted Six and half years, which ordinarily should not have lasted such a lengthy period,” the Nineteen Northern States and FCT CAN officials have been quoted as saying in a press statement.
