Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, has pardoned Segun Olowookere who was sentenced to death for stealing a fowl in the state.
Justice Jide Falola of the Osun State High Court had on December 17, 2024, sentenced Olowookere to death for conspiracy to commit armed robbery, robbery, and stealing.
Olowookere, who was 17 at the time of his arrest in November 2010, was found guilty of forcibly entering a police officer’s home and another individual, stealing their belongings in the process.
His case recently gained widespread attention after his mother appeared on a podcast pleading for intervention in her son’s plight.
The story went viral on social media, prompting Adeleke to direct the state’s attorney general to begin the process for his pardon.
In a statement on Thursday by the governor’s spokesperson, Olawale Rasheed, the governor announced the pardon of Olowookere, Morakinyo, and 51 other inmates.
The statement partly read, “In line with the recommendations of the State Advisory Council on Prerogative of Mercy, Governor Ademola Adeleke has exercised the prerogative of mercy towards 53 convicts serving various convictions within the Nigerian Correctional Service.
“Now know ye therefore that, I, Senator Ademola Jackson Adeleke, the Governor of Osun State of Nigeria, in exercise of the power conferred on me by paragraph (a), (c) and (d) of subsection (i) of Section 212 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as Amended), I am pleased to extend my grace and mercy unto the said inmates.
“Convict recommended for outright pardon for good conduct (capital offences) are: Sunday Morakinyo, Segun Olowookere, Tunde Olapade and Demola Odeyemi.”