In a case that has stirred deep questions about justice, compassion and the limits of the law, an Abuja Federal High Court on Thursday sentenced a man who was himself a victim of Boko Haram violence to nine years imprisonment, even as it simultaneously ordered his immediate release on the grounds that he had already spent more than a decade behind bars without trial.
Justice Peter Odo Lifu, who presided over the matter, handed down the sentence against Ali Kolo, a Borno State man who was shot in the right leg by Boko Haram terrorists, after finding him guilty of one count of failing to report the activities of the terrorist group to security agencies, an offence under the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act of 2013.
Kolo had been arraigned by the Federal Government on a four-count charge, but entered a guilty plea to a single count, specifically the allegation that sometime in 2017, he failed to pass on information about the movements and activities of the Boko Haram sect to the Nigerian military or any other relevant security agency, as required by law. The prosecution, led by Mr. David Kaswe, a Deputy Director in the Federal Ministry of Justice, tendered two exhibits before the court, an extra-judicial statement in which Kolo himself admitted to not relaying the information, and an investigation report that further indicted him. The defence counsel, Mrs. A.O. Usman, raised no objection to the admission of the exhibits.
Kaswe urged the court to impose a maximum sentence of ten years on the defendant, citing the guilty plea and the confessional statement, but the full picture that emerged during proceedings painted a far more complicated and deeply human story. Kolo, who was 37 years old at the time of the incident, told the court through his lawyer that he had actually set out to report the terrorists to the military but was shot with an AK-47 rifle in the process, an injury so severe it landed him in hospital and effectively made it impossible to complete his intended mission of alerting the security forces.
Justice Lifu, in weighing all the circumstances before him, acknowledged that Kolo did indeed fail to report the terror group, but held firmly that the failure was occasioned by circumstances entirely beyond the convict's control. Moved by this finding, the judge sentenced him to nine years imprisonment but critically ordered that the sentence be calculated from 2017, the year Kolo was first arrested and thrown into detention. In practical terms, this meant that Kolo had already served well over ten years in custody surpassing even the nine-year sentence and Justice Lifu accordingly ordered his immediate and unconditional release, ruling that to keep him in prison any further would amount to double jeopardy. The judge further noted that Kolo required urgent medical attention for the gunshot injury inflicted on him by the very terrorists whose activities the state accused him of concealing.
The Federal Government's lawyer expressed dissatisfaction with the verdict, but Justice Lifu was unmoved, stressing that Kolo's conviction was strictly limited to the concealment of information and bore no connection whatsoever to Boko Haram membership or weapons training.
In a separate but related case heard on the same day, Ibrahim Buba, a bricklayer from Borno State also known as Baba Gana, was sentenced to ten years in prison for a similar offence of failing to pass information on Boko Haram's activities to the military. Buba told the court that upon recognising some members of the terrorist group, he fled from Borno to Mubi in Adamawa State and eventually to Onitsha in Anambra State, where he settled into work as a bricklayer before he was apprehended in 2023. He admitted knowing two of the terrorists but confessed he had not informed the military, and pleaded with the court to temper justice with mercy. Justice Lifu, noting his appeal for leniency, imposed a ten-year term rather than the twenty years demanded by the prosecution, and directed that the sentence run from March 24, 2023, the date of his arrest and detention.
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