As 12 soldiers bagged death sentences for mutiny in Abuja, 15 other soldiers in Yola were yesterday handed a four year jail-term each at the 23rd Armoured Brigade, for their refusal to go to the war front against the insurgent Boko Haram sect.


The soldiers reportedly had been in detention for over three weeks.
They were sentenced by the military command for insubordination and refusal to face the Boko Haram as directed by their superior officers.

Some of the men were said to have fled from their duty posts and back to the cantonment after their colleagues have departed to face firework against the fundamentalists’ sect.

The source added: “The soldiers had allegedly refused the orders of their superiors to draft back to the theatre of war.
“In the military tradition, a soldier is expected to obey the last order but the 15 soldiers convicted by the military command were adjudged to have committed acts of insubordination by their refusal to draft to the warfront.”

The source maintained that the decision of the military, which came a few days after some soldiers who staged a mutiny and attacked the GOC, 3 Division in Maiduguri, were sentenced to death, is intended to reinforce sanity and discipline in the Nigerian Army.

“The military has been grappling with soldiers deserting from their tour of duty only to re-surface with all manner of tales, and the development is gradually beginning to impugn on the integrity of the military establishment,” he said.

The development has caused disquiet within the ranks of non-commissioned soldiers as they express dismay over the punishment being meted to their colleagues for no fault of theirs.

A non-commissioned soldier who spoke on condition of anonymity said: “Many of the soldiers were already disillusioned about the war which has claimed the lives of many.


“We felt that nobody cared about us anymore, as our concern, welfare and lives seemed to have no value in the eyes of our superiors,” the source noted. “So what do you do in a situation like this? You are asked to go into a war without the necessary weapons; whether you die in the process, nobody cares. Your colleagues who died in the process were not given a befitting honour,” the source concluded.