By Kunle Kalejaye
The courtroom is not a perfect shield for the innocent. While the court system is calibrated to deliver justice for the moment, things like a bad product that escapes a rigorous assembly line go wrong atimes. In the US, Jonathan Fleming spent nearly 25 years in prison for a 1989 murder he did not commit. Despite a hotel receipt proving he was in Florida during the shooting, despite sworn supportive testimonies, despite even a retraction by an incentivised witness, the system betrayed its purpose. Institutional failures buried the evidence. Only in 2014 was the paperwork unearthed by a Review Board. Both the Prosecution and the Defense, convinced of his innocence, matched before a Judge to reveal the reviewed pre-conviction evidence. And this led to his exoneration. He walked out of prison a free man redeemed from the eternal albatross of a criminal conviction for murder. The state whose machinery of justice failed paid him a $6.25 million settlement in 2015 for stealing nearly a quarter of a century of his lifetime!
While the US system can reverse errors through review boards, Nigeria handles judicial finality far more rigidly. Once the Nigerian legal system closes its doors at the highest level, correcting such failures shifts from courts to executive grace and benevolence. As Justice Chukwudifu Oputa famously noted in Adegoke Motors Ltd v. Adesanya (1989), “We are final not because we are infallible, rather we are infallible because we are final.” This underscores that while apex justices can err, their word must be absolute. Not
for the sake of the court but for there to be certainty in its powers.
When an individual exhausts all appeals up to the Supreme Court, the doctrine of functus officio is triggered. Anchored in Section 235 of the 1999 Constitution, this principle establishes that no appeal lies from a decision of the apex court. Consequently, the Supreme Court cannot reopen or reverse its final decision based on subsequent evidence of a faulty investigation or actual innocence.
The avenues to revisit concluded judgments are exceptionally narrow under inherent powers preserved by Section 6(6)(a) of the Constitution. As established in Alao v. ACB Ltd (2000) and Mark v. Eke (2004), the court will only vacate a final judgment in rare cases of proven fraud, total lack of jurisdiction, or a profound breach of fair hearing.
The apex court can overrule its past legal interpretations for future cases, as stated in Adigun v. AG Oyo State (1987) and Adegoke Motors vs Dr Adesanya(1989); however, it remains powerless to reopen a specific concluded criminal case based on reviewed pre-conviction factual errors or emerging exculpatory evidence. Therefore, the remedy of correction must rely entirely on the Prerogative of Mercy under Sections 175 and 212 of the 1999 Constitution.
This safety valve empowers the President or State Governors to grant a free pardon, which transforms the recipient into a novus homo (“new person”) by erasing all legal disabilities, penalties, and criminal stigma.
Nigerian history demonstrates how this executive power corrects deep injustices, fosters political reconciliation, or acts as a matter of state policy. Posthumous presidential pardons have been granted to activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the “Ogoni Nine,” and Major General Mamman Vatsa, whose military trials were widely condemned as flawed. Similarly, full state pardons were historically granted to prominent political leaders like Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1966 and General Olusegun Obasanjo in 1998, restoring their civic rights and enabling their reintegration into public life and service. In more recent times, this vast discretionary power was highlighted when President Muhammadu Buhari granted high-profile pardons to convicted former governors Jolly Nyame of Taraba State and Joshua Dariye of Plateau State, demonstrating that the executive safety valve remains actively utilized to completely clear legal liabilities and sentences even after definitive affirmation by the apex court.
In a poetic irony of fate, General Yakubu Gowon, the leader who pardoned Awolowo, later relied on the same safety valve from exile. Implicated in absentia for a 1976 coup but never tried or convicted, his military rank was taken away and his military pension stopped. He would perhaps have been court- marshalled and possibly met with the fate of execution by firing squad as meted out to the coupists who implicated him. But Britain, where he ran to after he was replaced by a military coup, stoutly refused to extradite him to Nigeria. Later, Gowon was granted a state pardon by President Shehu Shagari in 1981. His case highlights a unique dimension of Nigerian law: a pardon can operate as a pre-charge administrative amnesty, proving that executive clemency can step in post-conviction, during trial, or pre-charge to shield an individual from prosecution.
The principle of stare decisis, a foundational doctrine in common law systems that requires courts to follow previous judicial decisions, is still part of our court system. Even the Supreme Court is bound by its previous decisions. The principle promotes certainty in the law, fosters stability and enhances the development of a consistent and coherent body of laws would be severely hampered if court decisions are not certain. Eperokun v University of Lagos(1986). Lower courts would be obliged to defer application of decisions of the Supreme Court until they were sure that such decisions would not, by an application almost immediately after their delivery, be reviewed and altered. The Supreme Court, on very stringent conditions at times departs from a previous decision, but such departure will not and cannot affect the efficacy of the previous judgement. Omoju v FRN(2008)
Ultimately, when a faulty investigation is exposed after the legal doors have closed, the executive pardon stands as the definitive mechanism to override judicial finality and restore an innocent person’s name.
Asiwaju Kalejaye (SAN) is the founder and chairman of Eagle102.5 FM, Ilese Ijebu
