When the new study revealed that seven out of every 10 women on death row in Nigeria are mothers, it sounded like one of those cold data you just scroll past. But if you pause long enough, you get to see how heart-wrenching and impossible it is to ignore. Behind each number is a woman whose story ended behind bars, and children somewhere still waiting for her return.

The study, conducted by Hope Behind Bars Africa and the National Human Rights Commission, offered a grim picture of what justice looks like for these women. About three out of every four said they did not even understand the laws under which they were charged.

More than half believed their trials lacked transparency, while many spoke of confusion during investigations and court proceedings. The report did not clearly state how many had legal counsel or how competent that counsel was, but it raised enough concern to show that due process is often a luxury reserved for the privileged.

In one of the interviews from the study, a young boy, barely 11, said he could not remember the sound of his mother’s voice anymore. She was sentenced to death when he was four. His aunt now raises him, but he still hides whenever he hears police sirens. “They took my mummy that day,” he whispered.

That whisper captures what the data cannot.

Poverty, gender and a justice system that rarely listens

Most of these women on death row were already fighting for survival long before they entered the justice system. Many sold food by the roadside, worked as domestic help, or ran small shops that barely kept them afloat. When conflict found them, often in violent homes or desperate moments, they had no cushion to fall back on.

It is the same silence that surrounded cases like that of Mariam Sanda, whose story once gripped the nation, a young mother sentenced to death for killing her husband during a domestic dispute.

Her trial became a spectacle, a mirror reflecting both outrage and deep discomfort. For some, she was a symbol of justice served; for others, she was another woman trapped in a system that rarely looks beyond the surface. Beneath the headlines was a daughter, a mother, a human being whose story might have ended differently in a system that understood the full weight of context.

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In several of the documented cases, the women never had lawyers at their trials. Some were never told they could appeal. A few confessed under pressure just to make the beatings stop. In others, the evidence was so weak that a competent defence could have changed everything.

For many, their crimes were born out of the chaos of survival and a fight gone wrong, an abusive husband, a neighbour’s accusation that spiralled out of control. But in the eyes of the court, context rarely counts. Once the gavel falls, everything else fades into silence.

Gender also shapes how their stories unfold. Acts of self-defence are often judged as premeditated violence. The idea that a woman could be both a victim and a defendant still feels uncomfortable in Nigeria’s justice system. The law was never designed with women like them in mind.

Children serving silent sentences

What the courts never sentence are the children. They are the unseen ones living in the shadows of prisons, orphanages, or relatives’ homes. Some are too young to understand what “death row” means, and others learn to stop asking questions.

The study found that many of these children have dropped out of school. Some are already on the streets, repeating the same cycle of poverty and abandonment that trapped their mothers. Their trauma is quiet, but it is deep, a different kind of life sentence no one records.

When a mother is condemned and put on death row, her children start serving their own time.

A system in need of urgent reform

The deeper you look, the more it feels like Nigeria’s justice system is built to punish the powerless. Files go missing. Trials drag on for years. Legal aid is scarce. Even when human rights groups step in, bureaucracy often wins.

Experts are calling for urgent reform, not just to reduce death sentences, but to restore fairness. They argue that no justice system should operate without compassion or context. Retrials, clemency, and proper legal representation could save lives.

There are also calls for the government to strengthen gender-sensitive legal frameworks and provide social welfare for children affected by incarceration. Capital punishment may seem like justice served, but for many of these women, it is just injustice repeated.

What the numbers cannot say

Statistics will never capture the moment a child stops expecting his mother’s voice. They will not show the hands that used to cook, braid hair, or write school notes; now those lives are lying still behind prison walls.

Each of those women was once someone’s mother, sister, neighbour, the person who shared food when times were hard. Their stories remind us that justice, without empathy, becomes cruelty disguised as order.

When seven out of 10 women on death row are mothers, it says a lot about who society chooses to punish. It says that poverty and womanhood are still dangerous combinations in Nigeria.

Reform is not mercy. It is the least a country owes the forgotten mothers who never stopped loving, even from behind bars.

Cynthia Nwanonyiri