Nigerians woke up on Tuesday, September 16 to be confronted with a news that 12 out of 18 Nigerian soldiers fighting members of Boko Haram, especially in the North East, who have been court marshaled have been sentenced to death by firing squad for their attempt to kill their General Officer Commanding (GOC), 7 Division, Major General Ahmed Mohammed. They were confirmed to have shot at his official car between May 13 and 14, 2014.
They were found guilty of three out of the six count charges against them, which are conspiracy, mutiny and attempted murder of Major General Mohammed.
The incident took place at the Maimalari Barracks, Maiduguri in the course of the ongoing counter insurgency campaign. The Maimalari Cantonment is the headquarters of 7 Division, the newest Division of the Nigerian Army.
The court also found them guilty of preventing the movement of some of their injured colleagues to hospital and obstructing evacuation of their dead colleagues who were killed in ambush on their way from a operation in Chibok, Borno State.
The court jailed one of the soldiers for 28 days with hard labour, while five were discharged and acquitted.
Those who were sentenced to death are Jasper Braidolor, David Musa, Friday Onuh, Yusuf Shuaibu, Igonmu Emmanuel, Andrew Ugbede, Nurudeen Ahmed, Ifeanyi Alukagba, Alao Samuel, Amadi Chukwuma, Alan Linus, and Stephen Clement while those discharged were Naaman Samuel, Iseh Ubong, David Robert, Mohammed Sani and Sebastine Gwaba, as Jeremiah Echocho was sentenced to 28 days.
The nine-member all military Court, headed by the President of the Court, Major General C.C. Okonkwo, found the soldiers guilty of insubordinate behaviour, use of abusive language, leveling false accusation against their superior officers, among others.
Before their sentence, the legal team of the convicts had pleaded with the court marshial to “temper justice with mercy,” after narrating the pathetic stories of the family backgrounds of the convicted servicemen to the Court marshal team.
One of the convicted soldiers was said to be the only son of his 80-year-old widowed mother, another, father of a five-month-old baby.
The defence team in their argument prayed that giving the soldiers maximum sentence would do more harm than good, adding that it would increase the agony of their dependants.
Of course, there is no doubt the fact that every military man has one of the two choices in war situation, the same as Nigeria is going through in the North East: to live or die, irrespective of the circumstances. And therefore, the question of an appeal to the authorities not to kill them would have been out of place.
However, the fact that Nigeria needs as many soldiers as it can acquire to execute the terrorism war should make the government to have a rethink on this matter.
The erring soldiers, though, argued that they were not well-equipped to face the superior fire-power of Boko Haram, a thing that infuriated them and made them to take arms against their GOC, did not have good point to want to live after the deed was done.
We in Greenbarge Reporters appeal to President Goodluck Jonathan as the Commander-In-Chief, to consult with the superior officers in the armed forces with the sole aim of commuting the death sentence to either life imprisonment or otherwise. They could even be drafted back to the field of the battle with Boko Haram, with “guided attention.”
One thing that needs to be stressed is that killing 12 Nigerian soldiers would amount to making Boko Haram to feel a sense of victory. That is to say that Nigeria needs everything, even including identified “devil” within, to win the war against the insurgents.
[myad]
