Military Court Jails Nigerian Soldier For Stealing Bullets

A military general court martial in Maiduguri, Borno State, on Tuesday sentenced a soldier to 18 months in prison for unauthorised possession of live ammunitions outside his assigned duty post.

The court also ruled that three officers would not be promoted for periods ranging from 18 months to two years. The officers were found guilty of professional misconduct in the frontline.

The court martial, headed by Olusegun Adeniyi, a Brigadier General, tried Private Mcdonald Chukwu on a two-count charge after he was caught at a bus station with 89 rounds of 7.62mm live ammunitions inside his travelling bag.

He was arrested by a female police sergeant, Sarah Peters, who frisked his bag as he was about to board a commercial bus in Maiduguri.

Mr. Chukwu, in an earlier statement, admitted being in possession of the ammunitions, but said he forgot them in his bag when he returned from his duty post, as he hurried to get money from an ATM machine to travel.

He later disowned the statement, saying the ammunitions were not found in his bag.

An Army Major, Usman Inyam, was made to forfeit 18 months of his seniority status, for professional misconduct that involved his abandoning duty post in such a manner that may have endangered the lives of troops in the frontline.

His lone charge indicated that as a commanding officer in charge of infantry troops in Takumbare area of Gwoza local government, Mr. Inyam abandoned a post usually frequently used by Boko Haram insurgents when under attack by soldiers.

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Mutinied Soldiers Deserve Death- Nigerian Senate

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Defence, George Sekibo, said on Tuesday after a closed-door meeting with the nation’s service chiefs in Abuja, that the 12 soldiers sentenced to death for mutiny deserve to die and that they would not plead with the Nigerian Army to spare them.

After a meeting of over 3 hours with the Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh, Sekibo told reporters that, they are not under pressure because the Armed Forces is established by an Act of the National Assembly.

He added that, “The Act spelt out categorically the conduct of soldiers and the way they are to behave wherever they are. If you join the military that Act is to guide you and your conduct. If you go contrary to any of the prescribed sections of the Act the punishment prescribed for the Act you violated will come on you. So the military did not just wake up one day and say that they are going to kill Mr A or Mr B. They went through the necessary processes and they found them guilty”.

He however added that, “those found guilty also have a way out. They can go on appeal and if the appeal finds them not guilty that will be it. But for what the military has done, they have done the best thing because you must instill discipline in the Armed Forces. If you don’t do so one day all of us here will be sacked and you will not hear of this place again.”