{Nigeria’s military has announced a reprieve for 66 soldiers who had been sentenced to death for refusing to fight Boko Haram.}<\/p>\n
The soldiers, who were to be killed by a firing squad, will each serve 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n
They were convicted by court martial over their refusal to drive down a road at night after dozens of colleagues died in a Boko Haram ambush.<\/p>\n
The sentences were commuted following a review of court martials.<\/p>\n
The review was ordered by General Tukur Buratai, the country’s army chief of staff.<\/p>\n
Nearly 600 other cases are also being considered.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of Nigerian soldiers have deserted their posts, complaining that they are not properly equipped to fight Boko Haram, a terror group which has allied itself with the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
The group has been waging an insurgency since 2009 and is seeking to create an Islamist state in north-eastern Nigeria. It is responsible for the deaths of about 20,000 people.<\/p>\n
The reprieves come as a former presidential adviser on national security is on trial for allegedly diverting $2.1bn meant to buy weapons for the military.<\/p>\n
The review of the soldiers’ cases is part of a wider investigation ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari into the military and corruption.<\/p>\n
President Buhari won the country’s March general election after pledging to destroy Boko Haram and to rescue more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the extremists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Nigeria’s military has announced a reprieve for 66 soldiers who had been sentenced to death for refusing to fight Boko Haram.} The soldiers, who were to be killed by a firing squad, will each serve 10 years in prison. They were convicted by court martial over their refusal to drive down a road at night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000070972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-21988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":{"id":2000070972,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21988.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21988.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21988.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21988.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21988.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21988.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000070972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21988"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=21988"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=21988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}