Tinubu Grants Clemency To Army Major Convicted Of Selling Weapons To Militants

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved clemency for Major Suleiman Alabi Akubo, a Nigerian Army officer jailed for selling stolen military weapons to Niger Delta militants.

Akubo, 62, who had been serving a life sentence, was among 175 inmates who benefited from the presidential pardon and other forms of clemency recently endorsed by the National Council of State.

According to a statement issued by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, Major Akubo’s sentence was commuted from life imprisonment to 20 years due to what was described as “good conduct and remorse.”

Akubo’s conviction dates back to 2008, when a military court in Kaduna found him and five other soldiers guilty of illegally selling more than 7,000 military-grade weapons — including assault rifles, submachine guns and rocket-propelled grenades — to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

The arms, reportedly worth about ₦100 million at the time, were said to have been stolen from the Nigerian Army Command and Staff College, Jaji, and the One Base Ordnance, Kaduna. The presiding judge, Bala Usara, had noted during trial that one of the buyers was Sunny Okah, a brother to the MEND leader, Henry Okah.

It will be recalled that in 2016, MEND claimed that the Federal Government had agreed to review the sentences of Akubo and others as part of the Presidential Amnesty Programme.