THE debate over which is preferred, the death sentence or the life sentence, may never be resolved to finality. They are two sides of the same coin. In the case of the death sentence, punishment comes rather swiftly; but life sentence is punishment prolonged and postponed.
The nearest illustration on this can be located in what the military leadership in Nigeria did recently when it commuted the death sentence passed on 66 soldiers charged with mutiny, in the first quarter of last year, to 10 years imprisonment, which is the moral equivalent of a life sentence.
On assuming office, the new Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, promised to look into the petitions he had received on the issue of the death sentence. This was perhaps fast-tracked by the intervention of many civil society groups, human rights lawyers, international organisations and retired soldiers who considered the sentence and the procedures adopted as inhuman and high-handed.
Gen. Buratai ordered a legal review on which he finally based the commutal of the death sentence to terms of imprisonment.
Surely, a legal review is good but still more expedient is a moral review of the circumstances around the said mutiny, if the end of justice is truly to be served. The soldiers had been charged with disobeying their commander after they were ambushed in Borno State by a band of marauding Boko Haram insurgents.
The soldiers resented when the Commanding Officer ordered them on a particularly dangerous night expedition. However, they still proceeded on the journey that eventually claimed the lives of their platoon commander, a young Captain and a number of their colleagues.
Enraged by the Commanding Officer’s poor sense of judgment that came at such a great cost; and more so, the soldiers were being sent on a suicide bid – ill-equipped for battle as they were given only 30 bullets each and no food ration – they confronted the Commander.
What we see here is a clear case of misplaced aggression: money voted to fight insurgency was brazenly diverted into private pockets by the military leadership that later turned round to dispatch soldiers to the war front, almost bare-handed and on empty stomachs, as it were, for them to go and perish. And on refusing to proceed on the suicide mission, they were charged with insurrection. This is the very height of injustice, depicting that might still be right.
Here was a clear manifestation of total systems collapse being blamed on the innocent soldiers. If nothing else, the sordid revelations in the ongoing Dasukigate scandals point in one direction – funds meant for the procurement of arms and ammunition were criminally diverted to other devious purposes.
The 66 soldiers deserve nothing less than an unconditional pardon. Their conviction was patently defective and unjust. It is immaterial that their conviction was done by a military court. After all, those concerned are citizens first and soldiers after that.
Besides, the Nigerian Army is a formation of State that is run on the tax-payers’ money and it cannot be higher than the society in which it exists. Neither can it exist as an island unto itself.
The inalienable right to life guaranteed under Section 33 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria does not exclude soldiers.
Every living soul, including the soldier, has a right to self-determination. Everyone desires life over death. When the soldier enlisted in the army, it was clear to him that he was not signing for suicide; but for the defence of his nation’s territorial integrity.
Are there no limits to obedience? In plain truth, not only is man under no moral obligation to always obey unjust laws, he is also under no moral obligation to always obey just laws.
Sometimes, it may be necessary in the interest of the greater good to violate a just and sensible law. A man who refuses to violate a sensible traffic law in order to avert a possible fatal accident would be a moral idiot. Even for a zombie, it would be fool-hardly to jump into a deep well simply because the commander has so ordered.
The military must also realise that legal absolutism – the position that one is never justified in violating any law under any circumstance – belongs in the past.
In military parlance, the soldier must obey the last order because, in their estimation, the disobedience of even a bad law is wrong as that fosters a general disrespect for all laws, including the good ones. We object to this because it is like insisting that children must be made to eat rotten fruits along with the good ones lest they get the impression that all fruits should be thrown away. But isn’t it also likely that someone forced to eat rotten fruits may because of that develop distaste for all fruits?
By far the greatest, but unsung, dividends of governance under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration could reside in the lives of the 66 gallant soldiers. Had the Jonathan administration continued in power, the men would have long been sent to the gallows, going by the impunity of that era as espoused by Marshall Alex Barde, “They could have been tried, condemned, executed and buried in the field – all in five minutes”.
Having come this far, President Buhari should go the whole-hog of ensuring the unconditional discharge of the men. A season like this quickly reminds us of the need to paraphrase our Lord Jesus Christ, “Loose them and let them go”.
Again, there are worse offences than mutiny and one of them is the diversion of funds meant for the procurement of military wares, at war-time, into private pockets. This explains why the merchants of death, those erring military leaders, besides being charged for corruption, must also be held accountable for the lives of the soldiers who were dispatched to their early graves. We are reminded of the generally accepted legal dictum that no one should benefit from his iniquities.
VANGUARD
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