Mutiny saga...‘We’ll die if our only son is executed’

Clement’s mother displaying her son’s photo with friends before he joined the army

Lance Corporal Stephen Clement, 30, is one of the 12 soldiers recently sentenced to death for mutiny, by a military tribunal. But for his family, (an ailing 65-year-old father who served in the Nigerian Army for 37 years, a sick mother and two sisters, one blind and the other deformed), sending their bread-winner to a firing squad means death for all of them. Weekly Trust visited the family.

Pa Stephen Onyelofa is a very ill old man. The ex-soldier is seemingly still hanging on to life by a thread, waiting until the life support that has kept him alive all these years is finally cut by the Nigerian Army, which is awaiting the decision of an appeal court to go ahead. The life support keeping the retired Corporal alive is not a hospital machine or the latest experimental drugs – he is too poor to afford any such treatments. His life support is his son, Lance Corporal Clement Onyelofo, who buys his medications and who has been sentenced to die, with eleven other soldiers for mutinying against their GOC in Maiduguri on May 14 this year.

The ex-soldier describes his son not only as the light of his life, but the light of the whole family, including his aged mother and four other siblings, one of whom is blind, while another is paralyzed. As he looks vacantly into space, the old Corporal laments bitterly that this would be the second time the Nigerian army, which he served faithfully with honour will be letting him down at a moment of need. First, the Nigerian army abandoned him to his ailment immediately upon retirement, until his son Clement, a soldier who took on after him, began paying for his medical bills from his modest pay. And now by some cruel twist of fate, his only lifeline is being taken away from him.

Pa Onyelofa coughed several times, exhausted from talking as he struggled for words, even as his 55-yerar-old wife, Theresa, bursts into tears, pleading in pidgin English. “We dey beg our President. If dem kill am, dem kill all of us,” she wailed. Clement’s mother’s tears are symbolic of the tears of families of soldiers fighting the deadly insurgency in the North-East.
Events leading to the predicament of the condemned soldiers, in which they were alleged to have shot at the vehicle of their GOC, according to their legal defense team, remain contentious.

Lance Corporal Clement’s family members insist that he must be innocent. His sister, Comfort, who is the only relative to have seen him while he was held by the military prior to the court martial, told Weekly Trust that when she met her brother in custody and asked him to tell her truthfully, whether he was actually involved in attempts to kill their GOC, he simply told her that he is a victim of circumstances.

She said, recounting: “His superior officer had sent him within the camp to go and check the number of dead soldiers brought in to be recorded, and possibly check whether any member of their platoon was involved. While he was away, he heard gunshots and when he got back there was confusion. So, when they came, they arrested many of them, and he queried them for arresting him, when he was not among them. But the officer in charge said the shooting happened in his platoon and he ought to have stopped them.  He said if he had attempted to stop them, they could have shot him as the soldiers were very angry.”

Actually, it is not only the soldiers who have been angry since the battle against Boko Haram began. Wives of Nigerian soldiers barricaded the gates of the barracks in Maiduguri to stop the deployment of their husbands to the battlefront, protesting that their men have been poorly equipped to fight the insurgents. Military authorities tolerated the protesting spouses for a few days before issuing a strong warning. By then, morale was low, such that soldiers were reportedly dropping their weapons and running away from battle.

Recently, however, the military campaign to oust Boko Haram is gaining ground and victory after victory is being recorded, offering hope that the end of bloodshed in the region is in sight. The positive turn in the tide of war is being used as a case for the president to consider mercy. Military sources who spoke to Weekly Trust urged cautionagainst sending the wrong messageto families of soldiers fighting the insurgency, as the issue is an emotionally wrought one.

After Comfort visited Clement, her initial dilemma, she said, was how to break the news of his arrest to the family. “Even when I was told the news, I didn’t know how to break it to our father because of his poor health condition. I came to Mogadishu Barracks to see my brother and when he was brought before me, I started to cry. He was happy to see me and we started talking, as he asked about everybody in the family. I didn’t know when tears started rolling down my cheeks, again. I can’t imagine a world without him.”

Comfort recalledbetter days of her brother, who had just returned from a peace-keeping operation in Sudan and was without rest sent to Maiduguri in the heat of Boko Haram’s reign of terror. She said it was a moment of pride for the family. Sobbing, she pleaded with military authorities to temper justice with mercy. “I’m not qualified to say who’s right or wrong, but as a sister, as a human being, I’m begging for them to spare his life,” she said. “Look at my father lying ill, my sick mother and sisters, we all rely on Clement...if they kill him, what do you think would become of us?”

Two days after the court martial handed out the death sentences to Clement and the others,Comfort remembers going to visit him. She had been keeping the news from their father, but it was time to inform him. When she tried to get him to speak to the old man himself, the cellphone was seized from him. “Then he was pushed back into the cell,” she said.

Two other people for whom Clement is also a lifeline – his blind sister, Janet and his paralyzed sister Paulina – also wait in anticipation to speak to him. The two handicapped sisters said they would have joined Comfort to go see their brother but for their condition.

Janet, 35, is blind. She said her brother assured her of proper medical support that will restore her sight and was working towards it before misfortune struck. She said, “Blindness hit me in 2010after my final exams for NCE certificate at the College of Education, Akwanga. It started like fever and in the course of treatment, I became blind. I have been to several hospitals and he is the one footing the bills. I am not happy with what is happening to my brother. I really feel sad about it and I pray daily that let Almighty God intervene.  Since this blindness struck, there is no work I can do, but Clement has been catering for me. I miss him so muchand it’s worse now. I don’t know what will happen to me if he is killed.”

Paulina, 16, the youngest in the family, who is partially paralyzed, also hinges her hopes on Clement. She said her brother promised to take her to Lagos and enroll me in Senior Secondary School there. “The day I heard the news of my brother’s sentence,  I  felt  my  world has come  to an abrupt end.  I am pleading with the President to forgive my brother and the others.”

Lance Corporal Clement Stephen, who along with his convicted colleagues have kick-started the process of appealing the Military Court’s  verdict, has a wife and three children, the youngest just three months old. His wife is shocked to speechlessness, reserving what little strength she has for the young children waiting for their father to return. 

The story of the Onyelofa family illustrates the pain families of the other soldiers have been passing through since the death sentence was handed down to their sons by the Military Court. As the Onyelofa family show, this is not just about the fate of 12 men but of the fate of entire families. As the families of the condemned soldiers have been pleading all along, executing their sons will not restore glory. Another military source, however, feels security forces should, rather, focus on doing all it takes to support the fighting soldiers and the families they have left behind at home. “It is important in the process of defeating Boko Haram and proving, once again, that the Nigerian military cannot be messed with,” he said.