The rather tragic incident that led to the shooting of the General Officer Commanding (GOC), 7th Division of the Nigerian Army, Maiduguri, General Ahmadu Muhammad on May 13, 2014 was a dimmed chapter in the annals of the Nigerian Army and also marked a turning point in the war against terror in the North-east axis. Some troops of the Division who survived the night ambush of their colleagues by the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents on their way back from Chibok to Maiduguri a few days earlier were joined by aggrieved colleagues to demonstrate their ill-feelings over what they regarded as an avoidable calamity.
The troops had been ordered to return to Maiduguri at night even when they sensed danger in doing so. At the end of the day, 18 of them were court-martialled for mutiny, 12 sentenced to death, five were discharged and acquitted, while one was give 21-day sentence with hard labour. Soon after the death sentence was passed, public sympathy swung on the side of the 12 soldiers. A cross-section of Nigerians has expressed misgivings over the verdict of the military tribunal. Leading the pack is Femi Falana, who described the judgment as “wrong” in view of the circumstances under which the Nigerian soldiers are waging the war against insurgency in the North-east. There are those who feel that what the soldiers did was the gravest military crime and the convicts should pay dearly for it.
Sandwiched between the two shades of opinion are other Nigerians, who submit that though mutiny is a serious offence in the military circle, the soldiers should have been given a lesser penalty or even be freed with some warnings, when viewed against the backdrop of poor equipment at the disposal of the troops. This school of thought holds the view that if the armed forces had been as professional as it ought to be in recent years, the discontent and indignation of the junior ones would have been avoided, much less a mutiny.
Some compatriots believe that the incident is a consequence of the rot plaguing the top echelon of the nation’s armed forces in recent years. A recent report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stated that there is widespread corruption in the nation’s armed forces at a higher level, thereby militating against a successful war against insurgency in the Northeast.
So far, the position of many Nigerians is that the 12 soldiers should be given a reprieve in view of the problems of welfare in the armed forces, which have had a chilling effect on the morale of the men and officers deployed to the battlefield. Some defence analysts made reference to the concept of “positive re-enforcement” as the foundation for a devoted and courageous military. The concept is a military parlance for good welfare package. The Nigerian Army is widely believed to be lacking in this direction.
As for the plea for a reprieve for the 12 convicted soldiers, this may not be unheard-of in the nation’s history. We recall how some 27 convicted soldiers were sentenced to life jail for mutiny by a military tribunal led by General Ishaya Bakut (retd) for protesting the non-payment of their allowances on July 4 and 5, 2009, in Akure, Ondo state. They had served on the United Nations’ mission in Liberia. They were eventually pardoned in December, 2010 by the Army Council and discharged from the service. The Maiduguri episode might be different because it involved an attempted murder. Since the GOC, who has been eased out of the system as a result of the incident, was fortunate to escape being killed, we feel that the convicted soldiers should have their death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. As we have stated in this space, a soldier is as good as the equipment at his disposal coupled with sound tactical judgment.
