By Kayode Lawal The Supreme Court has discharged and acquitted a Nigerian Army sergeant, Akawu Bala, of the death sentence imposed o...
By Kayode Lawal
The Supreme Court has discharged and acquitted a Nigerian
Army sergeant, Akawu Bala, of the death sentence imposed on him by the General
Court Martial of the Nigerian Army.
The respite came the way of the embattled army sergeant
after spending 12 years in Kaduna prison waiting for ratification of the death
sentence passed on him.
Delivering judgement in an appeal he lodged at the Supreme
Court on March 16, 2017, a five-man panel of justices of the Supreme Court
unanimously discharged him from the death penalty.
Sergeant Bala was accused by the Nigerian Army of shooting
Isa Mohammed on December 9, 2012, when he was attached to the African Petroleum
Station at Sabon Tasha, Kaduna, with an AK-47 gun.
The victim of the gunshot was said to have died on December
10, 2012, at Saint Gerald’s Catholic Hospital in Kaduna.
Following his indictment, he was put on trial for murder,
which is punishable under Section 106 of the Armed Forces Act 2014, before the
General Court Martial on a two-count charge and was found guilty of murder and
subsequently sentenced to death by hanging.
On February 17, 2017, his appeal against the death penalty
was upheld by the Court of Appeal, Kaduna Division, on the ground that the
charge sheet upon which he was tried and convicted was not signed by a General
Commanding Officer as required by law.
Justice Obietonbara Daniel Kalo, who read the Court of
Appeal’s lead judgement, declared the process of the trial and conviction of
the Sergeant a nullity but refused to discharge him from the nullified trial,
promoting further appeal to the Supreme Court.
His lead counsel, Mr Reuben Okpanachi Atabo, a Senior
Advocate of Nigeria, had argued on behalf of the convict that, having declared
the trial of his client, a nullity, the Court of Appeal ought to have made a
consequential order to discharge the accused person from the flawed trial.
He drew the attention of the apex court to Section 193 of
the Armed Forces Act 2014, which prohibits the retrial of any military
personnel after his trial has been voided and set aside.
The Nigerian Army, through its lead counsel, Isaac Udoka,
vehemently objected to the arguments of the defence appellant and prayed that
the apex court should order the retrial of the convict in the interest of
justice.
In the Supreme Court judgement in the appeal marked
SC/889/2017, Justice Helen Morenikeji Ogunwumiju, however, agreed with Atabo
that the Court of Appeal ought to have discharged the accused person having
voided his trial and declared it a nullity.
Justice Ogunwumiju subsequently invoked Section 193 of the
Armed Forces Act 2014 and set the convict free, adding that the ordinary
meaning of Section 193 of the Armed Forces Act 2014 is that the accused person
can no longer stand another trial.
The apex court, while rejecting the arguments of the Army’s
lawyer, thereafter ordered the immediate release of the convict from Kaduna
prison, where he had been on remand since 2012.
Apart from Justice Ogunwumiju, the other justices on the
panel were Uwani Musa Abba Aji, Chidiebere Nwaoma Uwa, Stephen Jonah Ada and
Abubakar Sadiq Umar.
Sergeant Bala had in his defence claimed that he fired a
gunshot at Isa Mohammed and one other person when they walked towards him in
the dark at the African Petroleum Station and his order to them to go back was
rebuffed, prompting him to fire at them before they could capture him.
The convict claimed that he fired the gun at the two men
because it was during the peak of Boko Haram activity in Kaduna.
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