President Bola Tinubu has granted clemency to Major Suleiman Alabi Akubo, a senior officer of the Nigerian Army who was sentenced to life imprisonment for selling over 7,000 stolen military weapons to Niger Delta militants.
Akubo, 62, was among the 175 persons who recently benefited from a presidential pardon and other forms of clemency, following the approval of the National Council of State.
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, disclosed in a statement on Saturday that Akubo’s life sentence was reduced to 20 years.
According to him, the decision followed Akubo’s “good conduct and remorsefulness.”
Akubo, along with other senior officers, was accused in 2007 of illegally selling weapons kept at the Nigerian Army depots in the Command and Staff College, Jaji, and the One Base Ordnance, Kaduna.
The stolen arms, assault rifles, submachine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades were reportedly sold to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), one of the most notorious militant groups at the time.
In November 2008, a military court in Kaduna convicted Akubo and five other soldiers for their role in the illegal arms sales, which took place between January 2000 and December 2006.
Delivering judgment, the presiding military judge, Bala Usara, noted that the buyers included Sunny Okah, brother of Henry Okah, the leader of MEND.
The weapons were valued at ₦100 million at the time they were siphoned.
In July 2016, MEND announced that the federal government had agreed to review the life sentences of Akubo and five others as part of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).
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