Death Penalty Awaits Any Striking Soldier, Says Army

March 30, 2002

Etim Imisim

Abuja - The Nigerian Army has said that it has no place for trade unionism and that it is impossible for its soldiers to embark on strike as it is currently being rumoured because such an action would be viewed as a mutiny which carries the death penalty.

 The Army also described as false news reports about threats of strike action by junior military personnel, adding that the information emanated outside the military from anti-democratic agents who wanted to incite soldiers against the government.

 Col. Emeka Onwuamae-gbu, Director of Army Public Relations at Army Headqu-arters, Abuja, spoke to THISDAY Thursday reacting to a report carried in the paper the previous day about an alleged petition by junior military officers threatening to embark on strike action if their demands were not met at an "anticipated" time.

 The demands involve unpaid allowances and other benefits as well as pay discrimination against university degree holders. Onwuam-aegbu said the demands are unfounded.

 The latest petition was sent to President Obasanjo and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and was being being treated in the office of the chairman of the Defence Committee of the House. But Onwuamaegbu said that Nigerians should not be misled by the unprecedented strike action of junior police officers in February into thinking that soldiers can also take the law into their hands. The Army, he maintained, operated differently from the police.

 "The Nigerian Army functions in a completely different way," he said. "We take the issue of mutiny very, very seriously. It is quite different from the Nigerian police."

 He said further that no soldier in his right senses would want to embark on strike because of the grave consequence it attracts. "The consequence of such an action in the Army attracts the death penalty," he said. "The consequence is so grave that no soldier, no matter what his grievances, would want to embark on a strike," he continued. "Every military personnel understands this. There is no trade unionism in the Nigerian Army, absolutely not. so this issue of mutiny as a result of grievances does not arise at all."

 Onwuamaegbu maintained that there was no possibility of waving the law on mutiny in the Army and that soldiers were aware of the law before being commissioned or during recruitment. "Before you set out to become an officer or a soldier after training, you know that this is what the constitution says," he said.

 He again said that although both the Army and the police were voluntary organisations, striking policemen were likely to earn jail terms but that "in the Army it is execution, and that is a major difference."

"No soldier, I repeat no soldier, in his right senses, no matter what his grievances are, would want to embark on a strike action because he knows that, if he is caught, if he is found out, he would end up being executed. So strike does not happen in the Army, it has never happened, and I can assure you it would not happen."

 He said that there were ample opportunities for soldiers to seek redress within the system and that soldiers who had exhausted the channels available to them and still had not received satisfactory answers to their problems were free to leave the force. "This is the general spirit amongst soldiers - if you feel aggrieved about any issue at all, instead of embarking on a strike action, you write for voluntary retirement and leave," he said.

 Responding to the question of what could have driven soldiers with the military tradition he described into choosing the line of strike action, the Army spokesman said "There are no soldiers toeing this line of action. All these things you publish or we hear about are just figments of the imagination."

 He explained that the military authorities took the threat of strike very seriously the first time it came to public attention weeks ago and conducted thorough investigations in its formations throughout the country. "I can assure you the entire length and breadth of this country where we have military barracks and military installations were all investigated. There is no truth to these stories."

 He said that, when confronted with the news, soldiers were as bewildered as himself over the suggestion that stories about junior personnel planning to go on srike came from the Nigerian Army. "These stories are not from the Nigeria Army; no Nigerian Army soldiers could have written any of the petitions," he added.

 "We believe they are sponsored by people outside the military to incite soldiers against the authorities."

 Onwuamaegbu insisted that the petition was a fabrication, pointing out a factual error in one of the three signatories claiming to be a staff sergeant and an engineer in the Nigerian Navy.

 "It might interest you to note that in your story of yesterday (Wednesday), I hope you would include this in your interview, in your story of yesterday, one of the signatories to this letter said he was a Naval personnel and a staff sergeant. The Naval personnel who is saying that he is a staff sergeant does not know that there is no rank like staff sergeant in the Nigerian navy; so it is just mischief".

 "There is nothing - no rank - like staff sergeant in the Nigerian Navy, so it is all cock and bull."

 He stressed that the Army was committed to the Nigerian democracy and that it was concentrating on the improvement of its capability and operational readiness instead of "playing into the hands of mischief makers."

 Also, he contended that the Obasanjo administration had reviewed salaries of government workers and that "Nigerian soldiers are part of that" as were other organs and ministries of government. "Of course, the Nigerian Army benefitted from that, so we certainly don't have any problem in terms of salaries and allowances," he said. "I would say there had been a lot of improvement; training and welfare are much better than what it was in recent past,"

 The Army PRO also denied the claim that the military discriminated against university degree holders, saying that the military encouraged its officers and men to further their education and specialize along their lines of duty. He said further that it could not be a military policy to discriminate against its educated class as the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) had been upgraded into a degree-awarding institution now with a university status.

Also, he referred to a military recruitment advert in a national daily Wednesday encourging university graduates to apply.