Falana: Service chiefs have committed mutiny

Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Femi Falana, has lashed out at the Nigerian service chiefs as mutineers who have failed to do their duty.

Speaking at the black history month and Beko Ransome Kuti memorial programme organised by Committee for the Defence for Human Rights (CDHR), the public affairs section of the United States consulate general and the centre for the rule of law, Falana described the role of service chiefs in the postponed elections as tantamount to mutiny.

“They told Jega when they wrote illegally and contemptuously that ‘sorry we are going to be busy in the northeast, there will be operations going on there’ that they were not going to be able to secure your election. Please there’s no provisions for these service chiefs to police our elections,” he said.

“Under Section 76, Section 116, Section 132 and 117, it is civic responsibility of the INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) to fix date for elections. Only INEC, not the president, not the NSA, not the security chiefs now.

“Knowing that, they then came in fraudulently by saying we cannot guarantee your security and of course INEC had no choice in the matter. When a soldier says ‘I am not going to perform my duty’, what do they call that? Mutiny!”

He added that the service chiefs were on the forefront of sentencing unarmed soldiers to death for mutiny while they themselves were the masters of mutiny.

“Many of their boys, I’m defending them. Those boys said: ‘We are not ready to fight because you have not provided ammunitions; we don’t want to commit suicide because we didn’t join the army to die recklessly.

“They have tried them for mutiny. As of today, 70 soldiers have been sentenced to death for mutiny; the real masters of mutiny are the security chiefs now who are saying ‘We are not going to perform our duty under the law.’”

Falana added that the soldiers, under the law, have no business in policing elections but defending the country’s territories.

“What is their duty? Under Section 215 and 217 of the constitution, it is the duty of the army, the armed forces, to assist the police when there is a breakdown of law and order – not when there’s no breakdown of law and order.

“Nowhere in the Nigerian constitution, in the electoral act, in the Armed forces act, is any provison made for soldiers in our elections.

“It is the duty of the police to maintain law and order in peace time; soldiers have no business in town. Their duty is to defend the territorial integrity of our country – not to police elections.”

Hailing CDHR in its role in the Nigerian Democracy, the revered lawyer went on to brand David Mark, senate president and Sambo Dasuki, national security adviser, as enemies of democracy.

“The CDHR played a leading role in ensuring that we have this rickety democracy; some of us went to jails several times, against these criminals who are now trying to roll back the hand of the gun,” he said.

“Two of them, the senate president, said in September last year and it was well reported, that election was not on the table: it’s not our agenda now; we are fighting war. That was September last year when the senate reconvened.

“This fellow, Dasuki, who is canvassing for postponement and has had his way, was Babangida’s ADC. He and Mark were among the colonels who said over their dead bodies would Babangida hand over to Abiola.

“Those who plotted the June 12 annulment are back. Are we going to allow them?

“We are warning them; enough is enough. Our people are languishing in poverty and you’re saying we cannot even change our oppressors, let’s test some other oppressors.”

Falana extended his reservations to Jonathan “who contested in 2011 as a man without shoes, and wants to run for the same office along religious lines”.

“Twice now, your president has led delegations to Jerusalem, kneeling down before some Rabbi, you know, embarrassing your country; we want them to spend those funds to create job,” he said.

“If you give jobs to the youths and they are gainfully employed, if their parents want to go to Jerusalem or Mecca, they can sponsor them. It’s not the business of the government to do that.”

While hailing Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka for his role in the ascension of Goodluck Jonathan to the presidency when late Musa Yar’Adua was ill, he tagged Edwin Clark and his “cohort” as “old men with expired ideas”.

He concluded on the note that the government had “no monopoly of violence”, saying the people, if not given peaceful elections, would revolt violently.

“While we want change peacefully, we have no apologies. It’s not at all cost, unlike them.

“I think it was Kennedy that made a point, those who make peaceful change impossible would make violent revolution inevitable. We want to have peaceful elections, but if you make it violent, we would let them know that they don’t have the monopoly of violence”.