Moses Akatugba was 16 years old when he was arrested by the Nigerian police in 2005.
In the years that followed, he was beaten by the police, shot in the hand, and hung for hours at the police station. After 8 years of torture and ill treatment that led to a coerced confession of his involvement in a robbery, he was sentenced to death November 2013.
Moses’ case is sadly all too familiar in Nigeria, where a recent report by Amnesty International found the use of torture and ill-treatment to be rampant and accepted as standard practice by the Nigerian police and military.
The report outlines critical system-wide reforms and changes that are needed and that the international community- must press the Nigerian authorities to implement. Moses Akatugba and the thousands of others like him do not have the luxury of waiting for that kind of reform to take place. They face the risk of execution at any moment, following deeply flawed trials based on confessions extracted by torture.
They need our help NOW.
Every year, on October 1, Nigeria’s independence day the Nigerian authorities commute death sentences. Please join us and call on the Governor of Delta State to commute Moses Akatugba’s death sentence.
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