A 55-year-old Borno farmer, Ali Mustapha, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison — backdated to his 2013 arrest — for concealing information about Boko Haram’s activities in his remote village, with the judge acknowledging he had no security agency to report to.
A 55-year-old farmer from Katara village in Borno State has just learned the hard way that silence isn’t always golden — not when it comes to Boko Haram.
Ali Mustapha was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Federal High Court in Abuja after pleading guilty to concealing information on the sect’s activities in his village. The case was brought by the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation, and Mustapha didn’t contest it — he pleaded guilty as charged.
According to Daily Post, Delivering judgment, Justice Binta Fatimah Nyako handed him the full term, with no option of a fine. But she didn’t ignore the bigger picture: the judge took judicial notice of Mustapha’s plea that there were no government officials or security agencies around for him to report to, given how obscure and remote Katara village is.
Here’s the kicker — Mustapha has actually been in custody since 2013. Justice Nyako ordered that his 15-year term be backdated to that year, meaning the clock has effectively been running for over a decade already.
The case adds to a growing list of similar prosecutions tied to Nigeria’s long war against Boko Haram, where residents of conflict-hit areas have faced jail time for failing to alert authorities — even when doing so was, as Mustapha’s case shows, practically impossible.
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