Six Years after, 38 Army Officers Still Cry for Justice

Despite obtaining judgments from the High Court and Court of Appeal, the 38 senior officers of the Nigerian Army, who were compulsorily retired in 2016 unjustly, are still waiting for justice, Vanessa Obioha writes

Does the low morale of the officers and soldiers of the Nigerian Army have anything to do with the way they are being treated, especially in the face of the insecurity threatening the country? This is the question that came to mind when Col. Danladi Hassan, one of the 38 army officers arbitrarily sacked in 2016, sought the intervention of the Minister of Defence, Maj.Gen. Bashir Magashi (rtd), after the army disregarded the court injunction ordering his reinstatement.

Hassan and 37 other senior officers were forced to retire by the army in 2016. The mass dismissal affected nine major generals, 11 brigadier generals, seven colonels and 11 lieutenant colonels. The news of their retirement on June 9, 2016, sent shockwaves across the nation. The spokesman of the Nigerian Army then, Brig. Gen SK Usman had declared that the officers were compulsorily retired on “disciplinary grounds, serious offences.’’

 The “serious offences,” according to the authorities included partisanship during the general election of 2015, involvement in arms procurement fraud and jeopardising national security. The then Minister of Defence, Brig. Gen Mansur Dan-Alli (rtd) and the former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Tukur Buratai (rtd) himself, corroborated Usman’s statement, alleging further that due process and fair hearing were granted to all the officers and were found guilty by a competent legal procedure.

 “It took us a painstaking procedure to ensure we did not pick innocent ones. We started with one inquiry from One Division GOC to the other. After that, we subjected it to legal review. After the legal review, we forwarded our recommendations to higher authorities for consideration. So, it took us time; we have our own process also; our administrative process dovetailing into legal review and so on,” Buratai said at the time.

However, it did not take long for Nigerians to know that none of the 38 officers was queried, charged, tried or found guilty of any offence, let alone even appearing before any court-martial. Investigations into the army’s act showed that they acted illegally, thus leading to the National Industrial Court (NIC) ordering the reinstatement of Hassan and other affected persons. However, the authorities have continued to defy the court’s order. Several of the officers who felt the Army breached its extant rules and regulations in carrying out the retirements took their grievances to the courts to clear their names. This was after they had appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari for his intervention and reinstatement, but no response came from the presidency or the army.

Seven of the officers have since won their cases in courts, which ordered their reinstatement into the Force. The officers who got judgments against the Army are Maj. Gen. Ijioma, Cols Hassan and Suleiman as well as Lt. Cols Arigbe, A.S. Muhammed, Dazang and Mohammed.

Added to these seven are two officers who obtained National Assembly’s resolutions ordering their reinstatement.

Some of the officers who are still in their 40s are hoping that the authorities would carefully look into their cases in the interest of justice to continue to offer their military service to the country. Hassan is among those still waiting for the Nigerian Army to reinstate them as ordered by the court.

On June 28, 2022, Hassan’s solicitors submitted a letter on his behalf to Magashi’s office, urging him to prevail on the army to obey the court orders that declared the retirement of their client illegal. The solicitors reminded Magashi that on January 25, 2022, they had forwarded to his office the judgment of the National Industrial Court that set aside the compulsory retirement of Hassan.

“Unfortunately, since the receipt of our letter in January 2022, and the Army Council meeting in March 2022, our client is yet to be reinstated by the Nigerian Army in compliance with the judgment of the Court of Appeal, the final arbiter in a matter such as this,” the letter read in part.

 The letter noted that Hassan has been subjected to extreme hardship, and emotional and psychological trauma for not less than six years and still counting “in disregard of a subsisting and valid judgment of the National Industrial Court, affirmed by the Court of Appeal ordering our client’s reinstatement and payment of his salaries and allowances.”

 In 2018, the army first suffered a defeat at the Abuja National Industrial Court in a suit filed by Hassan seeking N1 billion as damages to void his compulsory retirement. The court would later vindicate the colonel in 2019 after nullifying the untimely retirement by the army.

 The trial judge, Sanusi Kado, had ruled that the Nigerian Army failed to convince the court about the disciplinary grounds for the compulsory retirement of Hassan. The army authorities, including the Nigerian Army Council, the Chief of Army Staff, and the Armed Forces Council, decided to appeal against the decision of the Industrial Court. 

 In December 2021, however, Justice Stephen Adah, reading the lead judgment of the three-member Appeal Court panel vindicated Hassan again by ruling that the appellants lacked merit in their suit.

The court also noted that “it was in that respect that the court now held that the compulsory retirement of the claimant was declared null and void; letter of compulsory retirement also set aside and he was ordered to be reinstated and a letter issued to that effect, reinstating him into the Nigerian Army with all rights and privileges”.

Though six years have passed since the army’s compulsory retirement, the arbitrary manner they were sent packing has remained a ghost haunting the force.

 Not a few observers feel that this perhaps may be one of the several factors responsible for the perceived low morale in the rank and file of the Nigerian Army. They argued that a situation where injustices are meted out on officers with arbitrary retirement or failure to obey judgment when a court of law orders, would weaken their morale and lower their performance.

Curiously, before he retired, Buratai disregarded the judgments of the courts and the resolutions of the National Assembly. The army authorities who run to the National Assembly for bogus appropriations to prosecute insurgency war treat the resolutions of the federal lawmakers with contempt and disdain. This has also raised eyebrows about the Army’s willingness to provide justice to the officers.

In delivering his judgment on February 5, 2020, in Col M. A. Sulaiman v Nigerian Army and others, Justice Sanusi Kado corroborated the officers’ arguments, insisting that the “compulsory retirement of the claimant (Col MA Sulaiman), is hereby declared null and void.”

 Other judgments followed a similar pattern with the judges denouncing the actions of the Nigerian Army against the officers and ordering their immediate reinstatement, promotion and payment of all their entitlements.

 Analysts have argued that if the Generals cannot be reinstated because age and years of service have caught up with them, the colonels and majors who are much younger in age and years of service, still have a lot of contributions to make in the Force.

 To further validate the claims that the officers were innocent of the allegations against them, it was reported that several of them were not even in Nigeria when they were compulsorily retired without a fair hearing.

 For instance, Lt. Col Thomas Arigbe was a Directing Staff on a two-year Exchange Programme with the Ghana Armed Forces at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, while another, Col. MA Suleiman, a national merit award winner for the safe rescue of several foreign hostages, was in Chad as military attache where his experience fighting the insurgents was being utilised.

This is also the case with Col. Hassan who led the troops in recapturing Bulabulin and Damboa from Boko Haram in August 2014. 

 A retired senior military officer who spoke to THISDAY suggested that the best way forward is to grant justice to the innocent and unjustly retired officers. He particularly noted that the officers who went to court and won must be innocent in every sense of the word because they would not possess the boldness and moral courage to do so unless they were guiltless. 

The retired officer who did not want his name mentioned, said that the image of the army has been damaged by the false accusations against the officers and the lack of fair hearing. He added that he wasn’t surprised that the judiciary provided justice for the officers to put a stop to the army’s impunity that led to victimising the officers. 

 “Injustice is injustice; injustice to one officer is an injustice to all. Justice cannot be built on acts of injustice. It appears that the army is deliberately delaying this issue for time to ensure that the compulsory retired officers’ coursemates complete 35 years of service like the senior ones. For the junior ones, they are hoping that they exceed the age bracket for their respective ranks. This is to ensure that legally they have no careers to return to, as the conditions of service prescribe 35 years as the maximum number of years an officer can serve. There is also a maximum age of an officer per rank,” he said.

 He, therefore, urged the military authorities to display the requisite honour and moral courage to obey the respective court judgments without prejudice and reinstate the officers in the interest of justice.