Abimbola Davies, mother to Enitan Ransome-Kuti, who was convicted of alleged offences during the war against Boko Haram, a sentence that earned him a six month prison term and a dismissal from the army; is pleading to the Nigerian Army for mercy.

Mrs. Davies, 72, said her family would hardly smile again, not after Mr. Ransome-Kuti had been convicted and jailed for his role in the fight against Boko Haram – the first senior army officer to be so treated.

?”I wonder why they singled him out, and treat him in this manner,” the old woman, who retired from the Army Signals, said during an interview last Friday?.

“He has been wearing army uniform when he was 11 years old. You can imagine somebody that has been serving the nation for 40 years, that they now come to give this kind of judgment. I don’t know why.?”

When the news of the military’s verdict was broken to her at home, Mrs. Davies said she wept.

“It is his brother and his wife that were begging me, because I don’t know how my BP (blood pressure) just spring up immediately I heard the news,” she said.

“I was shaking, that how come? How can Boko Haram issue come and spoil somebody’s career? Somebody that has been serving the nation for 40 years.

“Right from NMS (Nigerian Military School), he was Drum Major there. And he’s one of the best students there. Many people liked him, teachers, everybody.

“He does the work as if the work belongs to him. That is why I wonder why they would come and judge him this way. I felt bad, I cried, I wept bitterly.?”Mrs. Davies insisted her son would never abscond from his duty post, adding that Mr. Ransome-Kuti had been fighting the insurgents since 2009.

?”He doesn’t come home often, because they post him from one end to another, far in the north there?. They don’t bring him to Lagos, it’s that north that they have been taking him to,” Mrs. Davies said.

“And when this thing started, when he was the commander of one unit at Nguru, he was the one that led his men that they drove these people away. They faced them and drove them away from Potiskum.

“He was the one that fought that fight and those people went away. Before they came back in full force. And they even called him to army headquarters to commend him for doing that work.”

She appealed to Yoruba leaders to intervene in the issue and help save her son.

?”I’m just appealing to the military authority and Nigerians to help us beg them to send him back to his work,” she said.

“To give him back his rank and let him go back to work, because he doesn’t deserve this kind of judgment.”

Credit: PremiumTimes