Panic As Nigerian Army Detains Over 50 Soldiers
About 59 soldiers being detained by the Nigerian Army authorities in Kaduna State for allegedly committing various offences have raised the alarm over their current pathetic conditions in detention.
It gathered that while some of the soldiers are being detained in the guard room of 1 Division Admin Company, Ribado Cantonment, NDA (Nigerian Defence Academy) Old Site, others are being held in 1 Division Complex Military Police Guard Room, Informant Centre.
Some of the detained soldiers who spoke with on the condition of anonymity lamented that they had been in detention for over three years, saying that amongst them, some do not know their preferred charges while others have not been arraigned.
The detained soldiers lamented that they are being starved and left to fend for themselves, adding that some have become visually impaired while some have been divorced by their wives following their long detention without access to their families.
They said, “They just dumped us here. Some of us have spent more than three years in detention and the case is not coming up. They have not been feeding us. They have not been taking care of us.
“Meanwhile, in the army, any case that has reached three years without conclusion and they are not doing anything about it, it would be trashed.
“We are suffering; our parents and families are suffering. They don’t even care to know how we feed. Some of us have been held here for three years and five months while some have been detained for four years,” a detainee said.
“Some of us, their wives have left them because of the long detention and because they hardly have access to their husbands. Many times when our wives and family members visited us, they would not be allowed access to see us.
“Some of us are very sick now and some cannot even see well because of what we have been going through in the long detention,” another said.
The soldiers therefore demanded that their cases be either decided, concluded and their punishments determined as soon as possible or be let go without further delay.
