Three of the 12 soldiers recently sentenced to death by the military court-martial on September 15 for committing mutiny have dragged the Nigerian Army before the Court of Appeal, Abuja division, challenging the capital punishment handed to them. The soldiers – Igomu Emmanuel, Stephen Clement and Andrew Ngbede, with service numbers 09NA/62/1648/LCPL, 03NA/53/1816/CPL and 09NA/64/4214/PTE respectively – filed their appeal before the appellate court through their lawyer, Chief Godwin Obla, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
In the appeal which contained 11 grounds, the soldiers argued that the general court-martial erred in convicting them for conspiracy by failing to consider the alibi which they raised timeously but which was never investigated by the court-martial.
In ground one, the soldiers argued: “The general court-martial erred in law and thus occasioned a miscarriage of justice when it disregarded the objection the defence counsel raised before and at the arraignment of the appellants on the defective nature of the charge brought against the appellants.”
On the particulars of the error in ground one of their appeal, the soldiers noted that they were charged and convicted under section 114 of the Armed Forces Act as the charge did not tie the offence they allegedly committed to any of the subsections of the said Act and that the section did not define the offence of criminal conspiracy as an offence known to law.
They averred that count one, under which they were charged and convicted, was ambiguous, uncertain and defective, pointing out that they were charged under Section 114 of the Armed Forces Act but punished under Section 97 (1) of the Penal Code Law.
They further contended that count three, under which they were charged, was equally uncertain and defective as they were charged under Section 95 of the Armed Forces Act – which provides a punishment of life imprisonment if convicted, but were punished and sentenced to death under Section 106 of the said Act.
The soldiers maintained that the entire charges upon which they were tried and convicted were vague, disjointed, imprecise and so incoherent that they did not understand the charges, neither were their individual names stated on the charges. These, they argued, breached the provisions of Section 36 (6) of the Nigerian Constitution which entitles them to be informed of the details and nature of the offence(s) they are charged with. They insisted that the incoherent and disjointed nature of the charges upon which they were tried and convicted infringed on their fundamental human rights.
On the second ground of the appeal, the soldiers averred that the military court erred in law when it based its decision solely on an equivocal, indirect, negative, uncorroborated and suspicious circumstantial evidence in convicting them for attempt to commit murder, and observed that the GOC of 7 Division, Major General Ahmadu Mohammed (N/7915), whom they allegedly attempted to murder by firing shots at his official vehicle, was never led by the prosecution to give evidence during the trial on the alleged attempt on his life, just as no ballistic evidence was presented to show that it was their bullets that hit the said general’s car.
The appellants also argued that none of the witnesses at their trial clearly and unequivocally identified any of them as the person who shot at the general’s car, noting that the court-martial merely relied on circumstantial evidence which did not lead to conclusive and indisputable proof that any of their shots was one of those, if any, that hit the general’s vehicle.
They urged the court to set aside the decision of the general court-martial and to discharge and acquit them. They also want the court to order the payment of outstanding pecuniary benefits accruing to them.
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