Another 15 soldiers handed prison sentence in Yola

Barely one week after the Nigerian Army sentenced 12 of its personel to death, another set of 15 soldiers from the 

23rd Armoured Brigade, Yola, have been sentenced to four years imprisonment by the military authorities. The 

judgment was passed on the soldiers by Court Martial set up by the command after over three weeks in 

detention. 

The Court Martial after the trial, nailed the 15 soldiers for insubordination, dereliction to duty and refusal to 

undertake order assigned to them in the war against the Boko Haram insurgents in the North East part of the 

country.National Mirror reports that the convicts were those who recently fled to the Gidson Jalo Cantonment 

following their narrow escape in the hands of the extremists, who killed a many of their colleagues in the gun 

battle.

An insider revealed that the soldiers who were sentenced, had allegedly refused, “the orders of their superiors to 

draft them back to the theatre of war, shortly after their close shave with death without allowing them sufficient 

time to cool off.”

He said many soldiers were already demoralised over the war which has claimed the lives of many of them, saying 

that many of those in the ranks and file of the military have come to the conclusion that “nobody cares about 

them, whether they lived or died which has left them believing they were only mere pawns”.