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Nigeria reinstates 3k troops dismissed over indiscipline

Iran Press TV

Sep 3, 2015 5:25PM

Nigeria has reinstated at least 3,032 soldiers who had been dismissed for alleged indiscipline in the fight against the Boko Haram Takfiri militant group.

Nigerian army spokesman Colonel Sani Usman told reporters in Abuja on Thursday that those pardoned and recalled were among 5,000 dismissed soldiers.

"The reinstated soldiers have shown their total readiness to be re-launched into the theater to combat insurgency and have now commenced re-training exercise," media outlets quoted Usman as saying.

The spokesman, however, said the military authorities had upheld the sentences of those "with criminal cases." He said a judicial process would determine the fate of more than five dozen soldiers sentenced to death for mutiny and abandoning the war front. "The condemned soldiers have already filed for appeal. So it is in the judicial process and it is on."

Most of the soldiers were dismissed after they rebelled due to a lack of adequate equipment and weapons to confront Boko Haram. Last year, soldiers based in the city of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in the northeast, set up a protest camp after being ordered to deploy to a remote part of the region to fight Boko Haram.

Last December, a military court sentenced 54 soldiers to death for refusing to deploy and battle Boko Haram in the northeast. Twelve received the same sentence in September the same year for mutiny.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who came to power in late May, replaced the heads of the army, navy, air force and his chief of defense staff in an effort to re-energize the fight against Boko Haram. The militants have stepped up attacks ever since.

The Boko Haram militancy began in 2009, when the group started an armed rebellion against the government. Nearly 20,000 people have died and almost two million have been driven from their homes by the extremist group.

The militancy has spilled over into Nigeria’s neighboring countries. Troops from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger have been battling the terrorists in recent months.

Nigeria's neighbors, which have all suffered attacks by Boko Haram, set up a regional force earlier this year to end the conflict.