Set free our soldiers jailed for mutiny

Set free our soldiers jailed for mutiny

December 27, 2015

By Tonnie Iredia

The Nigerian military is fast becoming a ready topic for this column. I have no apology for it because if I couldn’t early in life summon enough courage to enlist in any of its forces, as a journalist, i ought to be able to write about the institution when necessary.

Besides, since 1997, when I served as a technical expert on elections to coordinate political broadcasts for the first post civil war elections in Liberia, I have come to greatly admire our gallant military which effectively led ECOMOG to make our nation, one for others to look up to, in our sub region. So, I was pleasantly delighted last week to learn from a statement by Army spokesman, Colonel Sani Usman that the Chief of Army Staff, Lt- Gen. Tukur Buratai, has now commuted to 10 years imprisonment, the death sentences earlier imposed on some 66 soldiers who had been convicted of mutiny. While thanking Buratai for his timely intervention, we believe, that bearing in mind the convoluted environment in which the soldiers were charged, he should have set them free

The 66 soldiers were among those arraigned by the army last year on charges of “criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to commit mutiny, mutiny; attempt to commit an offence (murder), disobedience to particular orders, insubordinate behaviour and false accusation, among others.” The men were convicted early this year by separate military tribunals. We disagree with the decision of the tribunals because the soldiers were only engaged in ‘constructive’ munity-a term which establishes that the so-called offenders were instigated by their supervisors to act as they did. The term is not new. In 2003, when the Court of Appeal had to review a similar case involving one Yussuf and 22 others, the Court according to the irrepressible Femi Falana, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, quashed the life imprisonment passed on the soldiers who had rioted at the Cairo Airport in Egypt. The court rightly ruled that the offence of mutiny for which the soldiers were tried was instigated by their officers who had diverted the medical allowances which ought to have been paid to the soldiers while receiving medical treatment in Egypt. In other words, rather than restricting itself to the charge of mutiny, the court appropriately found and dealt with ‘constructive mutiny’- an offence instigated by the complainants. Buratai should follow that persuasive judgment

Is it really rational to convict anyone of a professional misdemeanour under the immediate past leadership of the military which in every respect had the disposition of a trader? In our view, the accused soldiers couldn’t have done otherwise as they were not even equipped to fight the insurgents. They said so severally but in vain. One of the world’s oldest and largest newsgathering outfit, the Associated Press (AP) at a point reported that “several soldiers told its correspondents that they were sent into battle with just 30 bullets each and no food rations.” Opinion leaders in the industry corroborated such indicting reports. Indeed, in a testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the year before, the American Air Force Chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh III, stated that the Nigerian military was, “quite frankly, becoming afraid to even engage”. There was also the revelation by a former British military attaché to Nigeria, Col. James Hall that Nigerian peacekeepers in Mali at a time, had to buy pick-up trucks while their armor kept breaking down. If our soldiers themselves directly refrained from openly revolting,  their spouses and immediate families did so by staging public demonstrations against what they described as the sending of their poorly kitted bread winners to go and die in the warfronts. When this is added to the story that our military leaders deployed only 30,000 men to fight Boko Haram while 75,000 according to the All Progressives Congress, were deployed to secure the Osun State Governorship election alone, people are left to appropriately situate the allegation that some military leaders were not interested in ending the Boko Haram insurgency.

However, the charges against the soldiers remain arguably spurious because at the time they reportedly took place, the then military high command in its self-denial character publicly dismissed the mutiny story as false rumour. Does it then mean that the soldiers were tried on false rumour charges? Denials notwithstanding, what we heard angered the now convicted soldiers was the directive that they should return to base one fateful night after a mission only for Boko Haram to have information on their movement leading to an ambush in which many of their colleagues were killed. Who gave the said directive? Was he put on trial for the resultant untimely deaths? What about the GOC whose life was allegedly attempted by the convicted soldiers? Where is he? Is the rumour that he was retired correct? In any case, if his leadership role was deemed to be in order why was he transferred after the incident? Whether or not all these were considered by the tribunal which convicted the soldiers is not as relevant as the revelation by the former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) that our soldiers were not equipped to fight and that the last time weapons were bought for the Nigerian Army was in 2006. The nation has also now learnt from the former CDS that she lost many soldiers who walked into Boko Haram’s ambush facilitated by collaborators from within.

Consequently, the convictions are patently unjust. That it was done by a military court is irrelevant because no law is expected to be bad. In addition, the Nigerian Army is a societal institution run with public funds which can therefore not be an island unto itself. The army was in actual fact set up not for itself but in the public interest. As a result, its activities must be a matter of concern to the entire society for whose sake it exists. We are therefore free to deprecate the conduct of the previous military leadership which sought to impose capital punishment on soldiers who refused to follow an irrational directive for them to commit suicide