Buhari grants pardon to Ambrose Alli, man he jailed 100 years

 

BY OUR EDITOR

President Muhammadu Buhari in exercise of his power for prerogative of mercy has granted pardon to the late first civilian governor of old Bendel State, Dr Ambrose Alli.

Alli was governor of then Bendel State, now comprising Edo and Delta states, between 1979 and 1983, on the platform of Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN).

He was arrested alongside some other civilian politicians of his time following a military coup which saw then Major-General Muhammadu Buhari take over government as Head of State, after sacking the civilian Federal Government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s administration, on December 31, 1983.

Ambrose Alli was eventually sentenced to 100 years in prison by a military tribunal set up by Major-General Buhari for allegedly misappropriating N983,000, money meant for a road project.

He died not many years after he was released from prison on his 60th birthday on 22 September 1989, at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital in Lagos, according to information on Wikipedia.

Also, pardoned by President Buhari is one of Nigeria’s foremost nationalists and pro-democracy activists, Late Chief Anthony Enahoro.

READ: Nigeria frees 2,600 inmates from prison

Enahoro was reputed to have first moved the motion for Nigeria’s independence on the floor of the parliament, Western House of Assembly, in 1953.

He was accused of treason by the British colonialists and subsequently jailed in 1962. He died December 15, 2010 at the age of 87.

Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, who announced the presidential pardon Thursday at a world press conference in Abuja, said three other persons Ex-Lt. Col. Moses Effiong, Major E. J. Olanrewaju and Ajayi Babalola, also benefited from the president’s prerogative of mercy.

Effiong was convicted by a military tribunal of participating in a coup plot in 1986, against the General Ibrahim Babangida military regime. He was named in the same coup attempt that saw to the conviction and subsequent execution of army major-general and literary author Mamman Vatsa.