By Emmanuel Ogebe
Weeks ago, in a stunning judgment that confounded the nation, Nigeria’s Supreme Court upheld a death sentence on Sunday Jackson, a 24 yr old when he was attacked by a herdsman while farming in 2015.
The lead judgment claimed Jackson hadn’t met 2 of 4 requirements for self-defense but the judgment of Tsammani, JSC stated that Jackson met all 4 of 4 self-defense requirements however claiming there was yet another law on excessive force that denied him acquittal. Both judgments claimed three neck stabs were excessive for self-defense but strangely enough Jackson had only been charged and convicted of two neck stabs.
This controversial Nigerian case of Sunday Jackson vs the state bears contrast with the fascinating case at the US Supreme Court In the United States v. The Amistad.
The Amistad Mutiny:�In 1839, 53 Africans, who had been illegally captured and transported from Africa to Cuba, revolted on the Spanish slave ship La Amistad while en route to another port in Cuba and seized control of the ship.The Africans, led by Joseph Cinque were captured and brought to the United States, where they faced charges of murder and piracy.
The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where former President John Quincy Adams, representing the Africans, argued that they were free individuals, not property, and that their enslavement was illegal.
The Supreme Court agreed, ruling in favor of the Africans in 1841, that they had been illegally enslaved and transported and were therefore entitled to their freedom.
Justice Joseph Story delivered the opinion of the 7-1 majority, stating that the Africans’ rights to their own lives and liberty must supersede any obligations that Spain’s treaty with the United States imposes to protect property rights. The Supreme Court ordered that the Africans be declared free and returned to their homeland in Africa. Thirty-five of the surviving captives were returned to Sierra Leone.
It is hugely significant that as far back as 1841, predating the existence of Nigeria even, enslaved West Africans were able to obtain justice from murder charges even in racist 18th century America before that Supreme Court. How then could a free born Nigerian citizen lose his life before the Nigerian Supreme Court despite his constitutional rights in 2025?
At issue in Jackson’s case, was whether he could have run and whether he overreacted. However the constitution is clear that the death of an individual is not a crime if it occurred while a citizen was protecting his property or his life, which Jackson clearly was, his farm and his life respectively. The Nigerian constitution does not provide for flight but for fight.
At issue in the Amistad case was whether the ship being Spanish registered, the Africans should not be returned to Spain under a bilateral maritime treaty with the U.S. as Spain’s property and or be executed for murdering the Spaniard crew.
Whereas the Nigerian Supreme Court ruled that Jackson must hang, firstly, for not running and, secondly, for stabbing thrice the attacker who stabbed him twice, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 53 Africans were justified in revolting and killing their captors in a bid to run away, firstly, because they were free-born and, secondly, because slavery was illegal in America.
In so doing, the SCOTUS rejected the sovereign claim of the Spanish King, pursuant to a bilateral treaty, in respect to the laws of the USA against slavery and the fundamental human rights of the Africans to personal life and liberty.
On the contrary, the SCON rejected Jackson’s constitutional right to life and self defense in favour of a distorted application of the penal code of Adamawa state when the general principle is that any law contrary to the constitution must give way to its superior.
Ironically, the West Africans were poor wretched abducted persons who won 7-1 in the western world, not on the basis of the existence of a written African constitution or diplomacy of their non-existent nation but on the morality of the U.S. court recognizing their innate humanity against a signed treaty between two powerful countries while Jackson lost 4-1 under a constitution written by his people for his people in his own land, by their own hand!
Following his final judicial condemnation on March 7, I lamented how I recently got a client home to Nigeria from awaiting execution after 20 years when we got the Indonesian Supreme Court to overturn its prior confirmation of his death-by-firing squad sentence but couldn’t get Jackson off at home after 10 years. Like Jackson, “Ihejirika” was in his 20s at arrest and freed in his 40s while Jackson, after 10 years, was finally condemned in his 30s.
However after comparative law analysis with the Amistad SCOTUS case, one can only be mortified that 184 years ago, 53 West Africans won freedom from a foreign court, for killing white men who abducted them, to return home while Jackson is to be hanged by his country for killing a man who wanted to kill him. It would seem therefore that these poor Africans had greater legal rights then during the era of slavery than we do now under a free, independent, constitutional republic.
-Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq.
