“Twelve soldiers were convicted in September 2014 and sentenced to death by a court-martial for demanding weapons when the General Officer Commanding, the 7th Division of the Nigerian Army, visited a military camp in the war zone while 58 others were convicted and sentenced to death in December by another court-martial for demanding weapons to fight the insurgents. Therefore, the number of soldiers who were sentenced to death by the two court-martials is 70 and not 66.”
That was Lagos activist lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) clarifying the information released by Army spokesman Colonel Sani Usman on December 19 about the number of soldiers whose mutiny-related death sentences were commuted to imprisonment.
Apart from the confusing detail concerning the number of soldiers involved, more confusing is the decision by the military authorities to impose 10-year jail terms on the previously condemned men despite exonerating evidence.
Although the outrageous corruption-related narrative emanating from the office of the former National Security Adviser in the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, Sambo Dasuki, is still unfolding, there is already enough information to show that the soldiers being punished do not deserve punishment.
Those who ought to be punished are the crooks who stole public funds, using the anti-terror war against Boko Haram as a cover. The multi-billion arms scam and the alleged scammers making the news at this time are at the heart of the Jonathan administration’s failure to defeat the Islamist terrorists who have been on the rampage in the country’s Northeast since 2009.
Apart from the huge number of mortalities linked with the insurgency, and the huge figures of internally displaced persons, the yet-to-be-resolved kidnap of 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, over a year ago, remains a huge open wound on the country’s conscience.
It was an open secret in the Jonathan presidential era that people in power ironically fuelled the Boko Haram insurgency by fraudulent acts. The anti-terror war became a pro-terror effort because of the weakening of state-capacity by government officials expected to win the war. Under the Jonathan administration, the image of the Nigerian military appeared irredeemable as it battled unimpressively and unconvincingly against terrorism.
Now the world knows the terror war was kept going and had to be kept going to keep the fraudulent actors going. So, the mutinous soldiers have been vindicated. Their ultimate vindication would come when they are not made to pay for the sins of others. Or is military justice inflexibly and unfairly different?
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