A military court-martial has sentenced 12 Nigerian soldiers to death after they were found guilty of committing mutiny in Maiduguri, Borno State last May.
On 14th May 2014, a group of soldiers fired shots at Maj-Gen Ahmadu Mohammed, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 7th Division, at Maiduguri’s Maimalari Barracks.
The soldiers becameangry when they saw the bodies of 12 of their colleagues being brought back from Chibok, where they were killed by militants who ambushed a convoy of soldiers returning from anti-terrorism duties.
The mutineers shot several times into the air and called senior officers “cowards”, accusing them of deliberately putting them in harm’s way.
The following day, the GOC of the barracks was removed.
However, the court martial, which was led by Brigadier-General Chukwuemeka Okonkwo, sitting at Mogadishu Cantonment in Abuja from Monday night to Tuesday morningnsentenced 12 of the 18 soldiers to death by firing squad,
The 12 soldiers were pronounced guilty of the offences of mutiny and criminal conspiracy to commit mutiny are Cpl Jasper Braidolor, Cpl David Musa, LCpl Friday Onun, LCpl Yusuf Shuaibu, LCpl Igomu Emmanuel, Pte Andrew Ngbede, Pte Nurudeen Ahmed, Pte Ifeanyi Alukhagbe, Pte Alao Samuel, Pte Amadi Chukwudi, Pte Allan Linus, and LCpl Stephen Clement
The court martial found five other soldiers innocent of all five counts of insubordinate behaviour, false accusation, mutiny, AWOL and conduct to the prejudice of service discipline. Therefore, they were discharged and acquitted.
The five acquitted soldiers are Cpl David Luhbut, Cpl Muhammed Sani, Pte Iseh Ubong, Pte Sabastine Gwaba and Pte Inama Samuel.
The 18th soldier, Privatwe Ichocho Jeremiah, was found guilty of going AWOL (absent without leave) and he was sentenced to 28 days in prison with hard labour.
Jeremiah was also found guilty of conduct to the prejudice of service discipline, but he was only reprimanded for this offence.
