In the darkness of Nigeria’s death-row cells, the nation’s conscience lies shackled. Here, 73 women – our mothers, daughters, sisters, wives – await the hangman’s noose, while society wraps itself in complacent indifference. These 73 women represent a ghastly minority whose stories are eclipsed by indifference—but whose plight demands fury. They are part of the 3,688 souls condemned to death, but unlike their male counterparts, their suffering is woven with an added thread of betrayal: a system that refuses to see the scars of abuse, the fractures of poverty, and the desperation that pushed them into the abyss. These women are not anomalies; they are victims of violence whose desperation went unheeded.
Demilola Oguntola, 31, should be raising her three children. Instead, she sits in Suleja Correctional Centre, condemned for a crime rooted in fear of her violent husband. She fled her husband’s terror only to be branded a murderer; her silence, born of fear, became the rope that binds her to her children in another prison. She is not an exception; she is the rule. Across Nigeria, women on death row carry stories steeped in domestic violence, marital oppression, and abandonment by a justice system deaf to their cries. These voices echo across Nigerian prisons, where histories of abuse and trauma are erased by a justice system that tolerates cruelty. Their cells are not just prisons; they are graveyards of justice.
The statistics are damning. Of Nigeria’s 81,406 inmates in 2025, just 1,943 are women, but this figure marks an alarming 49.9% increase in just three years. And yet, in a nation that proclaims its commitment to justice, nearly all these women suffer double jeopardy: first at the hands of abusive homes, then in courtrooms that erase their histories of pain. Judges dismiss evidence of domestic abuse, lawyers are overstretched or absent, and trials are riddled with bias. In one grotesque miscarriage of justice, Maryam Sanda was sentenced to death without eyewitnesses, forensic proof, or even a murder weapon. And still, the Nigerian state dares to call itself just? The justice system applies its harshest sentence not to crimes alone, but to the trauma of the women who walked broken into its maw. Their crimes – often the culmination of domestic violence, coercion, and abandonment – should call for mercy, not the scaffold.
The burden of motherhood compounds the cruelty. Nursing mothers, pregnant women, and traumatized survivors of abuse languish in cells designed for men, denied sanitary care, mental health support, or humane treatment. Hope Behind Bars Africa (HBBA), an organization advocating for prisoners’ rights across the continent, highlights that many women go without healthcare in custody; some must buy their own medicine or rely on charity. Prisons, built for men, suffocate women under conditions that border on barbarism. Sanitary pads are luxuries, counseling is nonexistent, and healthcare is so abysmal that women buy their own medicine – or go without. Some give birth behind bars; others are left to rot with untreated gynecological conditions. The United Nations has warned that female inmates require gender-sensitive care. Nigeria’s answer? Silence.
The Bangkok Rules, which Nigeria has ratified, demand gender-sensitive correctional policies. Yet, only three women’s prisons exist nationwide – a perfunctory nod to reform in a system that abandons its most vulnerable. HBBA’s reports cut through state denial with cold precision: capital punishment in Nigeria is final and irreversible. In a system riddled with flaws – coerced confessions, poor legal representation, systemic bias – the risk of executing an innocent is unthinkable. For weeks, months, or years, these women languish in limbo, psychologically tormented by the uncertainty of a state that refuses mercy and mocks rehabilitation. HBBA’s bold advocacy includes training pro bono lawyers, setting up the Police Duty Solicitor Scheme, and demanding non-custodial sentencing to ease prison congestion. These are not just reforms – they are lifelines to battered souls on death row. Yet the state’s response remains sluggish, apathetic – while women suffer day by day.
Meanwhile, governors play politics with human lives, refusing to sign execution warrants since 2016, leaving women in a limbo of perpetual torment. Death row in Nigeria is not just a sentence; it is psychological torture. Women live each day with the dread of a knock on the cell door, the shadow of the gallows lengthening over their despair. This is cruelty masquerading as justice. This is state-sanctioned violence against women. The hypocrisy is unbearable. Nigeria parades itself on the global stage, yet clings to archaic laws that even 113 other nations have cast into history’s dustbin by abolishing the death penalty. How long will this country ignore that killing the abused does not make society safer? That executing women whose only crime was fighting for survival is not justice, but vengeance without reason?
In this moment, the Nigerian state stands accused – not just of negligence, but of systematic cruelty. Hanging a woman who was driven to desperation by abuse, poverty, or abandonment is not justice. It is vengeance without justice. It is violence with the stamp of law. Nigeria must act: abolish the death penalty, starting with these women whose lives testify to trauma, not criminality. Audit every case on death row, prioritize clemency where abuse, coercion, or mental illness were ignored. Guarantee access to dignified medical care, mental health services, and contact with their children. Fund gender-responsive rehabilitation, not barbarism masquerading as law.
The government must face this reckoning. It must abolish the death penalty, audit every female death row case, and introduce gender-sensitive sentencing guidelines that recognize histories of abuse. Legal aid must be expanded, prisons must be reformed, and mothers must be allowed to see their children. Anything less is complicity in torture. Nigeria, your prisons are bleeding. Your justice system is blind, but not to crime; but to compassion. If you will not save your daughters, then you stand condemned before the court of humanity. Let it be known: if Nigeria cannot protect its weakest, it has no claim to being a just nation. These women are not fodder for state power; they are moral reckoning. Their chains should awaken our conscience, and we must respond.