Ghana’s parliament voted on Tuesday to abolish the death penalty, joining a growing list of African nations that have taken steps to repeal capital punishment in recent years.
Though no executions have been carried out in Ghana since 1993, the country had 176 individuals on death row as of last year, according to data from the Ghana prisons service.
The new bill will amend the state’s Criminal Offences Act to substitute life imprisonment for the death penalty, according to a parliamentary committee report. President Nana Akufo-Addo still has to assent for the law to take effect.
“This is a great advancement of the human rights record of Ghana,” said Francis-Xavier Sosu, the parliamentarian who tabled the bill.
“We have conducted research, from the constitutional review to opinion polls, and they all show that majority of Ghanaians want the death penalty removed,” he told Reuters.
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Ghana is the 29th country to abolish the death penalty in Africa and the 124th globally, according to The Death Penalty Project, a London-based NGO which said it worked alongside partners in Ghana to help get the law changed.
According to Reuters, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic and Zambia are among the latest African states to have ended capital punishment in the last two years.
Nigeria’s Stance on Death Penalty: Highest Death Row Population in Sub-Saharan Africa.
As of December 12, 2022, Nigeria holds a staggering 3,166 inmates on death row, with only 62 of them being women, accounting for 1.9% of the total population. This information was revealed by the Controller-General of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), CGC Haliru Nababa, during a media parley in Abuja on December 15, 2022.
The country’s high death-row population has drawn international attention, with Amnesty International reporting that Nigeria has the highest death-row population in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2017 alone, Nigeria imposed 621 death sentences, which constituted 71% of all confirmed death sentences ordered in sub-Saharan Africa that year.
According to Al-Jazeera, close to three-quarters of the world has abolished the death penalty in law or practice, Amnesty says.
In 2022, four countries including Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic abolished the death penalty for all crimes, bringing the total number of abolitionist countries up to 112.
Nine countries have abolished the death penalty for crimes not committed during times of war while 23 countries still retained the death penalty but have not executed anyone over the past 10 years.
Fifty-five countries, including still retain and implement the death penalty.
The issue of the death penalty in Nigeria has long been a subject of debate, eliciting strong emotions across social and political divides.
Notably, international law discourages the imposition of the death penalty, but Nigeria continues to employ it as a capital punishment in its criminal law and penal code.