Patrick Okoroafor

Patrick Obinna Okoroafor was sixteen when he was sentenced to death by a Robbery and Firearms Tribunal on 30 May 1997. He is currently incarcerated in Aba prison, Abia State.

Patrick Okoroafor was fourteen years old when he was arrested in May 1995 and arraigned for robbery, a crime he said he never committed. The police later charged him and six others. According to Okoroafor’s brother, the police used pliers to pull out his teeth and he was hanged and beaten while he was in their custody. The brother said: “Patrick only went to the police station because the police wanted to inspect a car our mother had bought from one of the other suspects. That is when they arrested him. We tried to get him released, but the police refused.”

On 30 May 1997, at the age of sixteen, Okoroafor and his six co-defendants were sentenced to death by the First Imo State Robbery and Firearms Tribunal. This tribunal denied defendants the right to appeal. Okoroafor and one of his co-defendants, Chidiebere Onuoha who was fifteen at the time of arrest, petitioned the Military Administrator of Imo State for clemency on grounds of age. The Military Administrator confirmed the death sentences of the six co-defendants on 18 July 1997 and commuted Okoroafor’s sentence to life imprisonment. On 31 July 1997, the six men were publicly shot to death. Chidi Onuoha was seventeen years old when he was executed.

In May 2009, Patrick’s sentence was commuted to 10 years imprisonment. However, the ten year sentence is to commence on 29 May 2009, and does not take into account the 14 years Patrick has already spent in prison.