Four months after they were granted state pardon by the National Council of State (NCS), the former Governor of Plateau State, Senator Joshua Dariye and the former Taraba State Governor, Jolly Nyame, yesterday, were released from prison.
They were released together with159 convicts who were also pardoned by the NCS led by President Muhammadu Buhari on April 14, 2022.
As at 11 am yesterday, they were being documented, preparatory to their release.
According to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), the former prisoners were documented as at 11and they had since left the prison.
While Nyame was sentenced for 12 years for diverting N1.64 billion during his tenure as governor of Taraba, Dariye was sentenced for 10 years’ imprisonment for N1.126 billion fraud.
To this effect, the pardon of the former governors drew a lot of flakes from Nigerians as they claimed that the Federal Government was encouraging corruption.
Justifying the clemency, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the president, Garba Shehu, said that it would have been insensitive for the president not to pardon the duo, saying that they had life-threatening illnesses.
However, the duo could not be released immediately by the correctional service because, according to the Public Relations Officer of NCoS, Abubakar Umar, the Ministry of Justice would send a correspondence stating so.
Credit: The Nigeria Lawyers