In 1975, as a young reporter, I was assigned to cover the visit of Alhaji Lateef Jakande to prisons in Benin City in his capacity then as President of the Prisoners Welfare Association of Nigeria. I followed him to the main prison on Sapele Road and the smaller one at Ogba. It was my first experience inside a prison, including the death row, and it left a lasting impression because it was not a pretty sight. Death row in Nigerian prisons – now called Correctional Centres, though one may ask what is being corrected in someone not expected to come out alive – are filled with persons awaiting execution and they are hardly executed. One of the inmates we saw in the Sapele Road Benin prison in the 70s who was condemned to death for highway robbery and was in shackles even in the row, was released years later and he became a power broker. Several stories of this kind abound, and you then wonder why keep the death penalty if it does not lead to death.