A Military Special Court Martial at the Mogadishu Cantonment, Asokoro, Abuja on Thursday demoted Ibrahim Sani, a Major General and former Chief of Transformation and Innovation Centre of the Nigerian Army, to a Brigadier-General.

The president of the court, James Gbum, an Air Vice Marshal, demoted Mr. Sani after he convicted him on a five-count charge bordering on cheating. Mr. Sani had been standing trial in the court since 2015 after he was accused of dividing and allocating part of army land to himself.

Mr. Gbum also ordered Mr. Sani to return N23 million being the money he got after he sold the part of the army land to himself.

The court held that the convict fraudulently allocated to himself part of the land – 436 hectares, in Abuja and sold it.

The court president also held that Mr. Sani went beyond the mandate given to him by the army authorities which was “only to collect the Certificate of Occupancy (C of O)’’ from relevant FCT Agency.

He said the convict divided the land into two and allocated one part to himself, using a pseudo company in which he was the sole signatory.

Mr. Gbum said the convict sold portions of the land to different three people at N10 million, N7 million and N6 million, respectively.

The court president, however, said the conviction and sentence was subject to the confirmation of the Army Council.

Counsel to Mr. Sani, Paul Sule, said he would appeal to the army council to quash the sentence.

Mr. Sule said should the council refuse to quash the sentence, he would approach the Court of Appeal to do that.

(NAN)