The NPS Public Relations Officer, Francis Enobore disclosed this at a media parley on Saturday in Abuja. He appealed to the state governors to either sign the warrant for the execution of the condemned convicts or commute their death sentences to life imprisonment. He said, “The problem of condemned prisoners is still a very big challenge to NPS and we have been appealing to the relevant authorities expecially to the state Chief Executives (governors). “As you know, when someone gets to his last bus stop and is condemned to death and he has exhausted his appeal to the Supreme Court, the only opportunity he has to escape death is the governor commuting his death sentence to a term of imprisonment or sign the death warrant for this person to take his last breath. “But you know there is a kind of silent moratorium that most governors are not too willing to endorse death sentences. So they create a very big problem for us. But we keep appealing to the governors to do the needful so that we will be able to really manage these people effectively.” He cautioned against stigmatization of former prison inmates, describing this as an indirect way of pushing the person back to a life of crime.]]>