The Federal High Court sitting at Wawa Military Cantonment, Kainji, Niger State, yesterday sentenced a Boko Haram terrorist group commander, Abba Umar, to 60 years imprisonment for various acts of terrorism. The 22-year-old commander of the Boko Haram sect said he will rush back to Sambisa Forest to continue with terrorism if released.
The court found Umar, who was among a second batch of over 1,000 Boko Haram suspects being prosecuted by the Federal Government at Kainji, complicit in various acts of terrorism. He had been in detention since 2014 after a failed suicide mission to bomb a school in Gombe State.
Umar, who was 18 years old when he was arrested, did not exhibit any sign of remorse as the court passed sentence. Speaking through a Hausa interpreter, the convicted Boko Haram kingpin said he will hurriedly return to Sambisa Forest to continue with his acts of terrorism if he was ever released from detention.
He confirmed that the 17 pictures the prosecution tendered, which showed him, the car and Improvised Explosive Devices, IEDs, meant for the botched suicide operation, were authentic. He told the court that being a commander in the Boko Haram sect, he had over 100 lieutenants under him.
Umar equally told the court that he married two wives in Sambisa Forest, describing himself as “an Islamist warrior, and a commander in the Islamist army.” The judge convicted him on five counts charge and decided to impose lesser sentences after taking into consideration the age of the convict and the fact that he must have been exposed to “excessive and consistent religious indoctrination.”
The judge said, “For count 3, I sentence him to 60 years imprisonment. “I would have been more merciful but was rather dissuaded by the convict’s insistence that he would go back to the activities which constitute danger to the society and for which he was apprehended.”
