The spate of mindless murders for rituals has been on the increase for a while. When these are added to killings by terrorists, bandits and kidnappers the situation becomes exceedingly worrisome. With the emergence of General Christopher Musa as Defence Minister there is renewed confidence as those who vouch for his character and claim familiar knowledge of his competence say he is coming into the saddle with a glittering testimonial. The variant of killing that is no less cruel and stunning but to which the public has not heard full media briefing as it were is death arising from domestic violence. Not until President Bola Tinubu in the exercise of his power of prerogative of mercy granted Maryam Sanda Bello presidential pardon on compassionate grounds was the public brought face to face with such despicable goings-on. A great many members of the public were jolted to the marrow.

As the action by the President became controversial, leading to an uproar, Maryam’s case had to be reviewed. It was commuted to 12 years imprisonment. Maryam Sanda had been convicted of killing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, in 2017. She was sentenced to death in 2022. She appealed the sentence but the Appeal court upheld the judgment by the lower court. Last week, the Supreme Court endorsed the decision of the two lower courts. The Justices affirmed the death penalty!

The Supreme Court has spoken. How much leeway the President has in the matter going forward I cannot say. But President Bola Tinubu was right. He moved in the right direction when, using his power of prerogative of mercy, he asked that the young lady be released on compassionate grounds. It would appear he did not have full briefing, that the matter was on appeal in the Supreme Court. If he was, he would have exercised a little more patience. Now we are at a crossroads. Only lawyers can help us disentangle the matter. But the pronouncement of the revered jurist, who combined erudition with wisdom, Oputa now of blessed memory, rings clear and loud in my ears: “We are final not because we are infallible, rather we are infallible because we are final.”I must confess, in matters of this nature, I search breathlessly for Justice Ademola Candide Johnson. He was never in the Appeal Court or Supreme Court. He combined learning with wisdom. Listen

Also to Justice Yinka Ayoola in the matter of The Guardian versus Abacha’s Government when he said to government agents: If you were sent to kill the dog, were you also sent to kill the goats? He was referring to other enterprises that inhabited Rutam House with Guardian Newspapers Limited that were also locked out when The Guardian was prohibited and her offices shut down. Justice Ayoola was in the Appeal Court. The jurists, including Ayoola set The Guardian free. Consider this case in the UK sometime in 1977. Two young men went out with a young lady. As most young men not well brought up are wont to do, they got themselves drunk to stupor, including the girl who was scantily dressed to boot. When they rose, one of the men had an unlawful carnal knowledge of the lady. When her eyes were cleared, she realised that her womanhood had been violated. She reported the mess in which she had found herself to her mother. The mother called the police and the matter was taken to court. The judge said she brought the incident upon herself. He said she was drunk along with the guys. What was more, she was scantily dressed.

The judge said not many a young man could resist such a situation. He discharged and acquitted the young men. In the UK rape is a very serious crime. Signatories were collected and protests were organized by women. The young men went home freed.

We all stand, according to higher knowledge spreading today on earth, amid multiple harvest of our good and evil deeds. We will always do so. The laws are unalterable. And we sow through thoughts, speeches and deeds. What thoughts did Maryam carry within her before she inflicted the mortal blow on her husband? When seeds are sown within the garden of the heart they take shape, they take on form and become part of the harvest that return to us. Evil thoughts cannot but give rise to malice, hate and sorrow, and manifest in ugly deeds. Problems earthly in consequences are spiritual in cause because we are spiritual beings. We will need to come to this presently. This is why in the Western World, in the United States in particular, efforts are being made by psychologists and those in related fields such as psychiatrists are trying to dig deeper into human behaviour and consequences and the infliction of punishment.

This is leading to classification of crimes—those committed on impulse and those perpetrated through propensity. Prisoners themselves are being put in categories of those who are obstinate and not adaptable to improvement and those broken within and are willing to change inwardly, ready to turn a new leaf for the good.

They have come to the recognition of their guilt.

Deliberate efforts are being made to concentrate on the person of the prisoners and read through them. Those who were convicted of sordid crimes are put together in groups, away from those who went in convicted of petty thievery. Murderers are put together, from mere looks and radiations so they can experience themselves, and feel disgust form what emanates from one and all. With the disgust, they begin to feel remorseful. The images of what they had done, the cruelty, the inhumanity comes starkly before them. Unconsciously, the administrators by putting them into groups are yielding to the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species which is the Law of like attracting like. Battered inwardly, the prisoners abhor their experiences; in no time, they develop the longing to get out of the filth and supplicate for help, vowing never to repeat what had brought them to the dungeon, exactly as it is done in the Dark Region of the Beyond.

According to reports a presidential committee recommended that Maryam Sanda Bello had reached that degree of remorsefulness. If that is so, why do we continue to keep her in the confinement of a jail house how much driving to get her hanged. So, President Tinubu was right to have shown such compassion on her and others in similar level of change. What does the nation gain, what does it profit us in getting her hanged? The category she falls is that of those who acted on impulse reportedly upon seeing the naked picture of her husband’s girlfriend on his phone; not from the platform of propensity. She lost control of herself. It goes to prove the verity of what has now been revealed in higher knowledge that no man can match a woman in love and none can fall as deeply as woman. The fall of a woman because of their special endowments which make them special and standing higher than men can be likened to dropping from the 25th floor of a high-rise building. She would be shattered. A man’s fall can only be like the ground floor, at the worst from the first floor. He would bruise his knees and get up. Life continues. Maryam Sanda felt betrayed and she fell from high a floor!

In the Western World, matters are infrequently being treated strictly on the rigid letters of the Lawin these times. What is even more novel is that prisoners are kept in jail forever so to speak until they change and genuinely so, as certified by experts, psychologists and all. In other words, it is each prisoner that decides for how long he stays in the jail house. Efforts are now concentrated on bringing out the true humanity in criminals as well. Herbert Vollmann says in his epic, indeed, unique work, The World as It Could Be:“If in addition there arises in some the volition unselfishly to help along others who are not yet so far advanced in the recognition of their evil conduct, then this may bring many a person more quickly to the longed-for goal of atonement. The most important help however lies in psycho-therapeutic care…In other words, a knowledge of life must be offered given the condemned ones psychic support, and allowing the way to a complete inner change for the good to be recognized and found.”

Our verdicts will need to correspond with what Vollmann has described as the “demand of advanced modern psychology that punishment should awaken in the culprit the wish for atonement, and that in the infliction of punishment the opportunity should be given for psycho-therapeutic counselling”.

Our verdicts can no longer be An Eye for An Eye and Tooth for Tooth. (Deut. 19:21). We must begin to build a compassionate society. After all, didn’t Paul admonish mankind in his letter to the Romans: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather, give place unto the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord!” (Romans 12: !9).

There is nothing that is buried in the records of life. Each person will pay for his misdeeds except each person personally cleans them off through remorsefulness that leads to atonement and the linen is washed clean!