During the military era, a Chief of Army Staff (COAS) on the verge of retirement did cry out that Nigeria was one country ‘where anything goes’. He was referring to the entrenched lawlessness and moral degeneracy in the country at the time, a development that is worsening instead of abating. And lately, the serving COAS, Lt.- Gen. Kenneth Minimah, said while commenting on soldiers that desert their duty posts because of the fear of Boko Haram insurgents: “… A real soldier is known when he is put in the warfront. The one who is not a soldier would run away and abandon his job. Our soldiers are recruited from the Nigerian society and, today, most people are not called to be soldiers, they joined because they are desperately in need of jobs”.
Minimah was dead right! But in addition, there are soldiers that may be in no way better than the common, vicious criminal next door. Or how else can one describe a man, a soldier purportedly, who allegedly robbed a University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), Borno State graduate who gave him (soldier) a ride of his vehicle; and then shot and killed the victim in the process. Reports said the soldier asked the deceased, a fresh Physics graduate, to give him a ride, but later shot him dead before reaching his point of disembarkation and made away with the deceased’s car. Alhaji Konto Sulum, the father of the deceased, said the soldier asked his son, Mohammed, to give him a lift so he could reach his destination. But before getting to his destination, the soldier shot him dead and ran away with his car. “The soldier, who thought he was dead, dragged his body out of the car and zoomed off with it. My son crawled down to the roadside, near Asita Hotel at Bolori, where a Good Samaritan called the attention of Civilian JTF and they tried to rush him to the hospital. But he gave up the ghost before reaching the hospital… Before my son died, however, he informed the Civilian JTF that he was shot by a soldier who ran away with his car. The next day, his friend saw the soldier and his friend at Oando filling station on Baga Road with the car, where they alerted Civilian JTF and they were arrested”, Alhaji Sulum related. The cruel incident may be likened to the unfortunate fate of Sallah ram sellers from the western part of the country on their way to the North to buy rams for sale for the approaching Sallah some years ago. At a point on the Okene-Abuja highway, they were cornered, robbed and killed by policemen who claimed the traders were armed robbers. In addition to robbing and killing the traders, the policemen set ablaze the bus they were traveling in to avoid traces that could implicate them. But one of the traders who managed to escape exposed the atrocities the criminally-minded policemen committed; and justice prevailed in the end when the policemen were arraigned before a Kogi High Court in Okene, Kogi State, which found them guilty of murder and sentenced them to death by hanging.
It may well be rightly argued that the soldier that robbed and killed the UNIMAID graduate remains innocent of any crime – at least in the eyes of the law – until he is formally arraigned and his alleged offences are proved beyond any reasonable doubt. But shrugging of the significance of this callous act would amount to playing the ostrich game. Indeed, the heartlessness of the so-called soldier provides additional proof, as we have repeatedly drawn public attention to, that the Nigerian society has lost its moral bearings and is now adrift, rudderless, and in a sea of anarchy and decay. Otherwise, how can the very person entrusted with safeguarding the nation from the menace of criminals become chief suspect in a case of robbery and murder?
Therefore, no time should be wasted in bringing the soldier to justice. He should be speedily arraigned and diligently prosecuted. It would be disastrous if the case is messed up with or consciously bungled by the prosecution for immoral considerations. For, no one knows who the next target or victim would be. A society suffused in extreme materialism as to breed criminals, even among the most trusted lawenforcement agents, should reflect on its fate and grim future.
