In Nigeria, justice often performs a bewildering routine, acrobatic enough to convict a man defending his life, yet paralyzed when faced with the bloodlust of a mob.
The case of Sunday Jackson, a farmer who spent eleven years in the shadow of the noose for the “crime” of survival, is the latest act in this judicial circus.
While the pardon of Governor Ahmadu Fintiri has finally brought him home, the selective precision of our courts remains a haunting spectacle, especially when compared to the morbid silence surrounding the many unresolved murders that continue to stain our national conscience.
Jackson’s ordeal began in January 2015 when he killed a herder, Buba Bawuro, in a desperate act of self-defense on his own farm.
Arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to death, Sunday Jackson spent nearly 11 years in the shadow of the gallows.
Today, he finally breathes the air of freedom, granted a state pardon by the Governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadu Fintiri.
While Jackson is free, his story remains a haunting case study of a man punished for the instinct to survive.
A farmer in the Dong Community of Demsa LGA, Jackson was working his land when Bawuro drove his cattle onto the crops to graze.
The confrontation escalated quickly; Bawuro stabbed Jackson, but despite his injuries, Jackson managed to wrest the knife away and strike back. The encounter left Bawuro dead.
The ensuing legal battle became a referendum on the limits of self-defense.
In 2021, a Yola High Court sentenced Jackson to death. The presiding judge, Fatima Ahmed Tafida, ruled that Jackson should have fled once he disarmed his assailant.
This hardline stance was echoed on March 7, 2025, when the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in a 4-1 decision.
The majority opinion was clinical: while acknowledging that Jackson was initially the victim, the justices ruled his reaction “disproportionate.”
They argued that stabbing the attacker three times in the throat after the immediate threat was neutralized constituted murder.
However, a lone, powerful dissent came from Justice Ogunwumiju, who argued that the law cannot expect “surgical precision” from a man in the throes of a violent, life-threatening struggle. To the Justice, Jackson acted in a “heat of passion” sparked by the initial assault.
With Governor Fintiri’s pardon on December 23, 2025, that dissenting voice has finally been vindicated. Yet, Jackson’s 11-year journey through the belly of the beast raises a disturbing question: To what extent can people go to defend their lives in a country where the state often fails to protect them?
The Double Standard of “Clinical Precision”
It is deeply unsettling that the judiciary applied such rigorous, “surgical” scrutiny to a farmer defending his life, while the perpetrators of blatant, public murders often walk free.
In Nigeria, justice seems to have “legs and hands” when pursuing individuals like Jackson, yet develops “cold feet” when confronting mobs fueled by religious extremism.
While Jackson was meticulously prosecuted for a split-second decision on his farm, many murders, often based on spurious allegations of blasphemy, never see the light of day.
These extrajudicial killings have become a grim norm, ignored by the very system that pursued Jackson so relentlessly.
A Retrospect of Impunity
Consider the case of Deborah Samuel Yakubu. On May 12, 2022, she was mauled and immolated by an irate mob of her peers in Sokoto.
Her “crime” was asking that a school WhatsApp group remain focused on academics rather than religion.
One attacker even boasted on video, matchbox in hand, claiming credit for the fire.
The suspects were eventually charged only with “criminal conspiracy and incitement”. These are bailable offenses. But to make matters worse, about 34 lawyers showed up to defend the crime.
The suspects were later acquitted after prosecutors failed to show up in court. Where was the state’s “clinical precision” then? Why did the state not take up the murder case?
Before Deborah, there was Bridget Agbahime. In June 2016, the 74-year-old utensil vendor was lynched in Kano after asking a man to stop praying directly in front of her shop.
Despite the presence of police, the mob beat her to death as she knelt to pray. The matter never reached a meaningful conclusion in court.
A month later, Eunice Olawale, a mother of seven and a deaconess, was stabbed to death while evangelizing in Abuja. She had been warned by local extremists to stop, yet she persisted. Her killers were never brought to justice.
Going further back to 2007, teacher Christiana Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin was murdered by her own students in Gombe. A false rumor spread that she had desecrated the Quran while supervising an exam. She was stoned, stabbed, and burned beyond recognition. Though 16 suspects were arrested, all were released without charge.
And who can forget Sunday Achi? In 2004, the 400-level architecture student was strangled in a university mosque in Bauchi after a “fatwa” was pronounced over a tract he allegedly distributed. Chillingly, the man accused of pronouncing that fatwa later rose to become a cabinet minister of the Federal Republic.
The Open Sores of Injustice
What we see is a systemic disparity. The law is used as a hammer against a farmer defending himself, yet it becomes a shield for mobs and extremists.
Sunday Jackson’s pardon is a victory, but it is a solitary one.
Until the state pursues mob murderers with the same vigor it used to prosecute a wounded farmer, Nigeria will remain a land of “unresolved murders.”
These cases are open sores on the national conscience. They are stains of injustice that will continue to trail those who perpetrate them and those who allow them to happen.
We can’t continue to pretend that all is well. The Abel kind of cry will continue to rend our space until justice is served to the underdogs