Date Published: 04/28/09

HURIWA condemns life sentence for 27 soldiers

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, HURIWA, a development focused and democracy inclined non-Governmental Organization has on Tuesday condemned in very resolute terms, the sentencing to life terms’ imprisonment for twenty seven of the twenty eight soldiers standing trial on alleged mutiny charges at the 323 Army Artillery Regiment, Owena Barrack, Akure, Ondo State in a military court martial presided over by Brigadier-General Ishaya Baukat even as the Rights Group stated that the trial process amounted to a gross abuse of section 36 of the 1999 constitution and the entire chapter four of the 1999 constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Peoples and Human Rights charter because of the trial’s manifest lack of fair hearing and abuse of due process.

The soldiers were arraigned before the military court martial following their protest on July 5 th 2008 over non-payment of foreign mission allowances after serving in the peace keeping mission in the former war torn Liberia between August 2007 and April 2008. The now convicted soldiers made up of one sergeant, three corporals, twelve lance corporals and eleven privates including three ladies, were drawn from different military formations across the country for the peace keeping operation. The protest started when the soldiers were informed that the funds available would not be enough for the payment of their statutory allowances and that they should take what was available as the balance would be paid the following week. The Nigerian military hierarchy embarrassed by their public protest arrested and charged them before the military court martial over alleged mutiny.

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, HURIWA, which has consistently criticised the trial of the embattled soldiers because it amounted to the denial of the fundamental Human Rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of speech as guaranteed under the chapter four of the 1999 constitution which is the supreme body of law in operation and binding on all authorities and persons in Nigeria, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Human and Peoples Rights charter which has been domesticated in Nigeria as a local law asserted in a media release endorsed and made available to journalists by its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko that the sentencing of the Nigerian soldiers to life imprisonment was arbitrary and should not be allowed to stand the test of time because of its manifest injustice and unfairness to the soldiers who were not offered fair hearing. The Rights Group stressed that the public comment of the president of the military court martial during the course of the trial amounted to biased judgement because the author of the judgment had a pre-conceived idea that the soldiers brought before him for trial were guilty as charged even before the conclusion of the trial process.

The Rights Group questioned why Nigerian citizens in a democratic set up are not allowed the inherent rights to freedom of peaceful assembly to protest an imminent threat to defraud them by their superiors after they undertook an international peace keeping mission? When has it become a crime for Nigerians who are at the verge of been defrauded and they decide in their common good to become whistle blowers? it stated. The media statement averred that; ‘’HURIWA is of the opinion that the twenty seven soldiers should rather be paid their entitlement and the officers responsible for the delay should be charged for alleged financial indiscretion. The soldiers also deserve national apology for subjecting them to dehumanizing treatment after they had successfully done our nation proud in a foreign land as peace keepers’’.

HURIWA appealed to President Umaru Musa Yar’adua in the spirit of the principle of the rule of law to order the immediate release of the so-called convicted twenty seven soldiers and also order that all their legal financial allowances be offered them without further delay because anything contrary will discourage other soldiers from sacrificing their lives and resources on peace keeping missions around the global community.