Femi Falana, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has asked
President Muhammadu Buhari to pardon 70 soldiers convicted of mutiny.
The soldiers were, in 2014, found guilty of rebelling
against the authorities of their division in Maiduguri, Borno state and were
subsequently convicted.
The soldiers were earlier sentenced to death, but in 2015,
following a case pushed by Falana, the death sentence passed on them was
commuted to 10 years imprisonment by the military authorities.
In a letter dated August 25, 2021, and addressed to the
president, Falana argued that the soldiers had only demanded to be well
equipped to fight insurgency in the north-east.
The senior lawyer said it was not the soldiers’ fault that
they weren’t given adequate equipment to fight.
He said if the government could consider the rehabilitation
of repentant Boko Haram insurgents, the soldiers jailed for asking for better
equipment deserve to be pardoned.
“The Arms Procurement Panel instituted by Your Excellency
has confirmed that the sum of $2.1 billion and N643 billion set aside for the
purchase of equipment for the counter insurgency operations was diverted by
some military officers and their civilian accomplices. The coterie of military
officers who cornered the fund deliberately sabotaged the counter insurgency
operations of the Government of Nigeria,” part of the letter reads.
“In view of the criminal diversion of the huge fund
earmarked for acquiring military hardware for the defence of the nation the
indicted military officers and their civilian collaborators ought to have been
charged with mutiny, sabotage and other war crimes. But out of class
solidarity, a few of the indicted military officers and civilians have been
charged with the offence of money laundering at the Federal High Court by the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
“In the same vein, Your Excellency had alluded to the
injustice to which the convicted soldiers were subjected in an interview aired
by the BBC Hausa service on December 28, 2015. On that occasion Your Excellency
made a strong case for the convicts when you rightly observed that ‘The government
at that time sent the soldiers to the battlefield without arms and ammunition
to prosecute the war. That was what led some of them to mutiny. They were
arrested and detained because of this.’
“It is public knowledge that the Federal Government and some
State Governments have recently granted pardon and rehabilitated hundreds of
terrorists who had waged war against Nigeria and subjected unarmed citizens to
egregious human rights abuse. The soldiers who were convicted of mutiny for
demanding for weapons to fight such terrorist deserve to be granted pardon and
rehabilitated by the Federal Government.”
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Let s see the FG reaction to that.
ReplyDeleteI concur
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