Military court martial: Okah’s family, MEND disagree

The family of Henry Okah, the detained leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, on Friday said it did not know Sunny Owei Okah who was mentioned by the Military Court Martial that sentenced six soldiers to life imprisonment on Tuesday.
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leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, Mr. Henry Okah

Also, the spokesman for the militant group, Jomo Gbomo, said the conviction of the six soldiers amounted to double standards on the part of the Federal Government in the case involving their leader. Speaking in a telephone interview with Saturday Punch, the detained MEND leader’s elder brother, Mr. Charles Okah, said nobody in his family bore the name Sunny. He described the insinuation that Sunny was one of his brothers as an embarrassment to the Okah family and those who had known them over the past years.

He said, “I am the elder brother to Henry Okah. I read in national dallies how the court martial said Henry received some weapons from the military through a younger brother called Sunny Owei Okah. On behalf of the family, we do not know of any brother called Sunny Owei Okah or Sunny Bowei Okah. Ordinarily, I was just following the court martial like any other Nigerian. What has caused concern to us is this mention of Sunny Bowei Okah.

“That is why we think that they are referring to somebody else. We’ve never had faith in the judicial system in the country anyway. A situation where they have come up with the name of an unknown person, who they claimed to be Henry Okah’s brother is very embarrassing to us. That name never featured in the proceedings, but suddenly came up during the ruling. We see this as a very desperate measure by the government to convict Henry at all cost. We are extremely embarrassed by the claim of the court martial and I am speaking on behalf of all of us in the Okah family.”

But Gbomo, in an e-mail, said the six convicted soldiers were being sacrificed by the Federal Government through the court martial. He, however, said it amounted to double standards for the six to be charged with selling of arms instead of charging them for terrorism and treason as was done to Okah.

Part of the mail reads, “The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has observed the double standards by the government of Nigeria over the charges which led to the conviction of the six innocent soldiers by a court martial. If the men supplied weapons to the militants and MEND as claimed, the charge ought to have read treason and terrorism as it was charged on Henry Okah. MEND never got its weapons from the Nigerian military except for those seized during fighting or those abandoned by soldiers.”