Court Orders Stay Of Execution Of Soldiers On Death Row

The Court of Appeal, Abuja division, has stopped the execution of the death sentences passed on two of the 12 Nigerian soldiers court-martialled by army authorities last September.

The soldiers were tried under the general court-marshal which sat at the Army Headquarters Garrison, Mogadishu Cantonment in Abuja, on sundry allegations ranging from attempts to commit offence, disobedience to a particular order, insubordination, false accusation, criminal behaviour, conspiracy to commit mutiny and mutiny under the Armed Forces Act 2004.

All the 12 soldiers who stood trial were convicted on September 15, 2014, and sentenced to terms ranging from life imprisonment to death penalty for the respective charges following the trial which commenced earlier last July.

Three of the convicted soldiers, Cpl Stephen Clement, Cpl Igomu Emmanuel and Pte Andrew Ngbede, however, approached the appellate court through their lawyer, Chief Godwin Obla, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), to challenge the decision of the court-martial. The convicted soldiers raised 11 grounds of appeal each in their separate appeals challenging the fundamental irregularities and improprieties that characterized the entire trial. They asked the court to stay the execution of their sentences pending the hearing and determination of their appeals.

Upon the appeals by the convicted soldiers, an apparently incensed Nigerian military, which had earlier acknowledged the receipt of the application by the convicted soldiers’ lawyer for the release of the record of proceedings at the court martial to enable him compile the record of appeal, blatantly ignored the application and refused to release the record of proceedings at the general court martial, all in the bid to frustrate the appeals.

Series of correspondence by Chief Obla to both the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and the president and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces – wherein he expressed apprehension at the likelihood of the army to execute the death sentence verdict on the three soldiers following their ominous silence over the release of the record of proceedings – also failed to attract any response from military authorities.

In a desperate bid to save the lives of his clients, their lawyer, Chief Obla, last February initiated another correspondence with the executive secretary of the National Human Rights Commission, seeking the commission’s intervention to prevail on the army to release the record of pr oceedings to enable him prosecute the appeal of his clients. The effort yielded no positive result as the army still refused to release the document.

However, while delivering its ruling on the application for stay of execution filed before it by Cpl Igomu Emmanuel and PTE Andrew Ngbede, two of the convicted soldiers, on Monday, the Court of Appeal restrained the Nigerian Army, or its agents, from carrying out the life imprisonment and death sentences, and ordered that the convicted soldiers be granted access to their lawyers.

The court presided over by Justice Abubakar Jega Abdulkadir also ordered the Nigerian Army to avail the convicted soldiers of the record of proceedings of the general court-martial, which tried and convicted them, to enable them compile records for their appeal. (Leadership)