Undoubtedly, soldiering is a business of death. But the court of equity must rise up to help the weak whenever and wherever the law becomes an ass. While maximum penalty for mutiny in Nigeria is death, the circumstance that leads to a certain behavior ought to be taken into consideration before applying a verdict of sentence of death. The soldiers have complained of inadequate arms and ammunition and poor motivation as their reasons for disobedience in fighting Boko Haram. It is on this basis that we plead to the authority to commute their sentence – Our Admin. (List’s credit: LIB)
I’d like to apologise for the various ‘typo’ errors detected from the posted piece. I wasn’t even certain it would be published as various Nigerian online publications are not as straight-forward to publish views/opinions by the general public.
I must add that an appeal must be in place in order to save these soldiers’ lives, irrespective of the rigid decree/philosophy of their ’employers’. Family members should seek arious advocacy to overturn the sentence because there is a fundamental impact on their own wellbeing. Abdication of duty in the frontline does not necessarily amount to a death penalty, even where it is a coded decree. The shame and regrets of being a ‘lesser soldier’ will suffice as a learning point for those affected, and to those who may want to take similar option in future, since Boko Haram seems to strengthen against the military by the day – therefore, it is not an ‘extermination by execution’ which this court martial decision should evoke. If the senior ranks of the army would be honest, and feel so bad about the shortcomings of these Other Ranks, then they should be transparent enough to share the blame for non-efficacy of leadership, based on what the ‘world’ knew as the sequntial cause and effect of the scenario.
I stated previously the counter productive consequences of wasting more lives, especially military personnel who had genuine reasons to abdicate their national calling. A number of mitigating factors should be taken into account such as lack of adequate equipment, the demoralised population of operatives in the fight against insurgency, the unitended political awareness of the soldiers that while the would have been effectual resources, the leadership had converted such to meet their own self interests, and however remotely, the command authority had already failed to organise and direct the system of assault/defense systematically to motivate the troops.
In more organised military structures, capital punishment would be the last resort as a depletion in rank and file soes not constitute economic efficieny, neither would it have served any attitudinal deterrence.
Yes, dessertion is usually penalised with a death sentence but does it have to be so rigid in the face of equivocal politically driven insurgency. An ignominous discharge after a prison sentence would be as severe as can be.
An appeal must be launched to seek a revocation of this arbirary and draconian decision. Does the military ‘chancery’ ever considered the wide spread after-effects of this decision: family and image of the military itself. It brings the military organisation onto the level of a bad-behaved child justifying such by ‘I didn’t ask to be born’. Is the military now stating that the soldiers signed up ‘to die’ while they can not provide the tools for the soldiers to action what they signed up for. The determination would have a long lasting affect on how the nation sees the image-making stance of the army, in particular. The decision is irrational, inhumane and crude.