Four men. Four death sentences. One bloody Sunday in Owo. The message from Nigeria’s courts is clear: attack the church, pay with your life.
But here’s the whisper from Whitehall. The UK government offered quiet support. Not public, of course. No press release. Just a nod through diplomatic channels. A ‘we understand’ in the margins of a memo.
This is not about morality. This is about the alliance. Nigeria is a Commonwealth partner. A key player in the fight against Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province. When Abuja asks for backing on ‘counter-terror justice,’ London can’t refuse.
Remember Owo. June 2022. A Catholic church in Ondo State. Worshipers gunned down, grenades thrown. Forty dead. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. The trial was swift. The verdict: guilty. The sentence: death by hanging.
Human rights groups are screaming. ‘Unfair trial.’ ‘No due process.’ ‘State-sponsored execution.’ They point to Nigeria’s abysmal record on judicial transparency. They are right.
But the game is different. The game is about stability. Nigeria’s President Tinubu needs to show strength. He faces an insurgency in the northeast, separatist violence in the southeast, and a bandit crisis in the northwest. A soft line on terror would signal weakness.
And the UK? The UK needs Nigeria’s oil, its diplomatic support on the global stage, its role in the Commonwealth. You do not lecture your allies when you need their votes. You whisper encouragement.
Sources inside the Foreign Office say the official line is ‘we respect judicial independence.’ But off the record? ‘We told them we would not condemn a swift process for the Owo attackers.’
This is the logic of the lobby. Power is a transaction. Justice is a tool. The four men will likely hang. The UK will not object. And the alliance will hold.
What happens next? Observers note the risk of diplomatic blowback. The European Union and United Nations have voiced concerns over Nigeria’s death penalty. But the UK is playing a longer game. It is betting that stability in the Gulf of Guinea outweighs a row over capital punishment.
Insiders also note that the UK’s own stance on the death penalty is ‘absolute abolition,’ yet it rarely presses its allies. The last public row was over the execution of a British-Nigerian drug trafficker in 2013. That time, London critiqued but did not break ties.
Now, the stakes are higher. Terrorism is the new opium of the West’s foreign policy. If you are with us against the jihadis, we will look away from your hangings.
For the four men in the dock, the game is over. For the UK and Nigeria, the game continues. The whispers will get louder as the execution dates are set. But the outcome is written: the alliance will survive, the hangings will proceed, and the lobby will move on to the next crisis.
