Indications have emerged that the Court Martial of Brigadier General Ransome Kuti, Commander of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) and 30 other officers under him, was moved to Abuja from Lagos for trial in order to meet the deadline set by the Army High Command to conclude all trials on or before May 29, 2015.
it will be recalled that Brigadier General Kuti, was in charge of Baga in Borno State, when the Boko Haram terrorists struck and overran the headquarters last December killing over hundred people including soldiers, families and carting away a cache of arms.
Vanguard gathered that the President of the Court Martial which hitherto sat in Lagos, Major General S.D. Aliyu where Brig-General kuti and others were initially arraigned on February 2015, is also President of another Court Martial trying Brigadier General Komolafe and 23 other senior officers.
Military authorities having realized that both trials will be too demanding on the senior officer and one military court, decided to set up another court martial to try Brigadier General Ransome Kuti and others in Abuja.
On his part, Brigadier General Komolafe was the Brigade Commander in Bama, when Boko Haram terrorists took over the Brigade and the town, killing and maiming so many people.
At the end of the attack, international bodies put the death of Nigerians at over 3, 000 while the Defence headquarters insisted that the figure of those killed including military personnel was just over 150 persons.
Vanguard was told that among the reasons for the inability of the Court Martial in Lagos to fast-track the court process was the issue of delay tactics employed by lawyers of the accused. Most of the senior officers being tried were said to have hired the services of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) to defend them and their insistence that every substance relating to each case must be trashed out has made it cumbersome.
(Vanguard)