It all started on Monday, November 20, 2017. A Nigerian parent whose son had applied in the ongoing 2017 Enlistment Exercise for the Direct Short Service Commission (DSSC) – Course 25 of the Nigerian Navy had called a BD SUNDAY correspondent to draw attention to a controversial clause in a declaration form that he was required to sign as a condition for accepting his child into the Navy’s recruitment exercise.
The parent, whose child had applied in the graduate category of the recruitment exercise, said he considered the “scary” clause very offensive and a sign of government’s utter lack of value for the lives of the citizens.
The controversial clause in the “Certification by Parents/Guardian” form reads thus: “I…..parent/guardian of…., who is applying for recruitment into the Nigerian Navy, hereby certify that I fully understand that my child/ward will (if required to) attend the Recruitment Exercise and I shall not demand compensation or relief from the Government in respect of death or any injury which my child/ward may sustain in the course of or as a result of any task given to him/her during the exercise.”
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“I can never sign such a thing for my child. Reading it alone, I asked my son to perish the idea. My son desires to go for national service, and because of that desire he is expected to participate in a recruitment exercise, and you are now saying you are not taking an indemnity on his life in case of anything, what then is the essence? Why are you inviting people?” said the visibly angry parent whose name has been omitted to avoid possible victimisation of his applicant child.
“What does the government mean? God forbid, but supposing in the course of physical training my child slumps and the worst happens, not that the child deliberately plunged him into death, the government will tell me it is not taking responsibility? Haba! That in itself is a mark of irresponsibility on the part of the government. It then means that all the efforts I put into training that child up to that level would have been in vain. The government is not serious; they are not even encouraging people to join the service,” he said.
A death warrant?
Equipped with a printed copy of the form which contains the passport photograph and other details of the applicant, BD SUNDAY extricated the part containing the applicant’s photograph and details before sharing the controversial section with other parents to get their reactions.
When he read the form, Akpan Udofia, a blogger, complained that the wordings were rather too strong, asking curiously, “Are they going to war?”
“I mean, sending your child to a national service cannot be sending him to war. You expect to see your child back from any kind of training. If it is a war situation, you can understand and say, ‘Ok, he might not come back.’ You will resign yourself to whatever fate brings. But this is an entirely different scenario. It is scary. It is like signing a death warrant for your own child,” he said.
“I will find it very hard to sign this kind of form. Now you only know one side, you have no idea exactly what is waiting for the child there. Anything can happen and if you raise any issue they will say, ‘But you signed this form.’ If I have to sign this, then the Navy would have to show me all the exercises that the child is going to be involved in and I could decide if it is worth it. But this is just too open-ended. I can’t sign it,” he said.
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Francisca Ugwuja, a staff of a frontline insurance firm in Lagos, who said she found the wordings too ambiguous and open-ended, suggested that rather than add such a clause, the government should take insurance on the lives of the enlistees. “The government can become careless and then they push it to the parents with the argument that you have signed your child’s death warrant, so why to demand compensation?” she said.
“For me, therefore, there are two things. One, the Navy should rephrase its sentences. Two, they should bring in insurance. There is need for indemnity in case of any eventuality, which is a global practice. You cannot just ask parents to sign away their children because the children volunteered to serve their nation. If you value your citizens, insurance should be a must for recruitment exercises like this,” she said.
She added that as a parent, she would not sign such a form because “it is like you are giving away the child’s life”.
A Lagos-based media practitioner who pleaded anonymity said he believes the clause was a new addition.
“Has this been the rule? This must be new because I was in the Nigerian Defence Academy in 1984 and there was no such thing. It may be a new way of weeding some people off the system,” he said.
He, however, said if his child willingly wanted to join the Navy and he as a parent was required to sign the form, he would do so without hesitation.
“I will sign it. I think the reason is that I am a hardened person and I had wanted to be there. So I won’t feel it. Secondly, I know God will see him through. It’s not all about death, by the way. So many people are in the force already; many have served diligently and retired and are still living their lives,” he said.
“But that does not take away the fact that the words are frightening. It makes you feel as if you don’t care for your child, that the government is trying to be hard on you. I think it is a little bit tough. It can easily put one-off,” he added.
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Experts’ view
Femi Falana, a prominent human rights lawyer, told BD SUNDAY that the clause on the Navy Enlistment Form was a recent addition which could have been necessitated by a recent judgment at the ECOWAS court in which the military lost. The case, he said, involved the death of an enlistee due to negligence of officers who supervised the training.
“The clause has just been introduced because we won a case against the military in ECOWAS court. The boy was killed out of the negligence of officers at the military Defence Academy. The military authority was asked to pay $75,000 to the parents because they negligently killed the boy. He was allowed to drown,” Falana said.
He added that even that clause in the form that parents are asked to sign cannot exclude or save the military from liability as the right to life of citizens of Nigeria and foreigners is constitutionally guaranteed and the right to life is not given by parents.
“And so, if that right is violated through negligence, whoever is responsible would face the wrath of the law. The clause is useless. If any Nigerian dies in the course of training in the military school, whatever the parents have signed is totally irrelevant, the law will take its course. You cannot sign off the life of anybody,” he said.
According to Falana, in every situation were death occurs, the law will investigate the circumstances, and if negligence is established, whoever is responsible will pay dearly for it through paying compensation and possible prosecution.
“There are certain agreements which are illegal and this clause is one of them. Whether parents are aware of it or not is irrelevant. For instance, if a driver asks you to sign that any passenger who died from Lagos and Ibadan would not be compensated if you sign it, it’s irrelevant as far as the law is concerned. There are circumstances under which right can be taken by the state and that is not one of them,” he said.
Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, executive director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and national contact, Transparency International, expressed the view that the clause in the enlistment form is not a good practice, describing it as probably a very clever way of neglecting people who are supposed to be in military custody.
“If you are training somebody and then you turn to say that you are not responsible for the person’s life, I don’t think it is proper. There should be no reason for such a clause. You must be responsible for the safety and security of people that you are training,” Rafsanjani said.
“There should even be insurance for such training because they are under your custody, and such insurance would have made the military to be more careful and responsible. With this clause, the military could be more careless. This is a licence to neglect things that will jeopardise the lives of the enlistees,” he told BD SUNDAY.
Victor Ibharalu, principal partner, V. E. Ibharalu & Co, a Lagos-based law firm, said that the starting point in probing the controversial clause in the Navy Enlistment Form was to take a critical look at the law establishing the Nigerian military and, in this instance, the Navy’s pattern of recruitment.
Ibharalu, who has spent the last 25 years mediating between employees and employers, among other things, said the point the military could be trying to make with the new clause could be to buttress the fact that enlistees are not employees yet since they have not been given a letter of employment, and as such, it was safe for the military to want to avoid certain responsibility.
“I am looking at it now from the employer/employee relationship. At the point the military is recruiting them, they are not employees yet. It’s like saying you want to recruit for the army and everybody should come for trial, and some people collapsed and all that. At that point, your health status may not have been fully disclosed, and even if it was disclosed and you met something contrary, of course, you know we doctor documents in Nigeria,” he said.
“If you tell Nigerians to go and bring medical certificate, everybody will go and get money to sort themselves out. So, if you go and bring such certificate, the Navy may say, ‘Come, in the course of this training if anything happens to you, we will not be held responsible. I want to assume that could have led to the clause in the enlistment form. The outcome of that training is pre-condition for employment. So, they are not employees yet,” he said.
Explaining further, Ibharalu said the issue of the right to life as stated in the Nigerian Construction may not apply under such circumstance since no life has been taken, adding that the military would have been advised by its legal department to let parents/guardians of enlistees be made to sign such undertaking in the interest of the military.
“The job is a volunteer. You are looking at it from the moral angle by asking why a graduate who wants to go and serve his fatherland in the military would be asked to sign such an undertaking. But the fact remains that the military is not a National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) which is compulsory. If a bad event happens to you while serving your country in the NYSC, the authority may say, ‘We have something for you.’ That is not a voluntary thing but a compulsory service,” Ibharalu said.
“If somebody dies in the course of that service, especially during NYSC orientation camp, the family might pick a case against the government. But in this other case, you are a volunteer; and in law, we say ‘voluntary not injurer’; you cannot voluntarily assume risk and expect to come and complain of certain rights, because you assume the consequences of that particular step that you have taken. That is the angle that the Nigerian Navy is coming from,” he said.
He, however, agrees with Falana that the element of negligence on the part of any military formation, if proven by other parties, would legally void the clause in the enlistment form.
“Falana will take it from the human rights angle. If the military officers are negligent, whether the family signs the form or not, it is not going to take away that negligence. If there are proofs of negligence, the military cannot escape compensation demand by the family.
“Family members should not be afraid because if the negligence of the military leads to death, it can be proven by several methods. The evidence in Falana’s case couldn’t have been provided by the military. It must have been provided by a third-party witness. Sometimes there has to be an autopsy report to that purpose. The Falana’s team must have used the medical report on the cause of death as part of the evidence they tendered at the court,” he told BD SUNDAY.
Navy explains
To get a clearer view of the issue and to present a balanced report, BD SUNDAY sought an official explanation from the appropriate military quarters.
When contacted on the telephone, Major General John Enenche, Director, Defence Information, said he was aware of the “no compensation” clause, but added that he could not comment on the subject until he sought and received permission from higher authority to do so.
“Yes, there is a clause like that. But I can’t comment on it now. Let me get the view of higher authority before I can speak on it. Let’s talk tomorrow. Before then I would prepare my response,” he told our reporter on Wednesday.
However, his telephone was not answered when he was contacted as agreed.
When contacted on Wednesday, Navy Capt. Suleman Dahun, acting director of information, Naval Headquarters, acknowledged the existence of such a clause but said he was not in the position to speak on the subject, but rather promised to contact the secretary whom he said possessed enough information regarding the issue.
“Call me by 3 pm, I will connect you to the secretary who will then tell you everything you want to know about the clause,” he said on the telephone on Wednesday.
When he was reached on Friday, however, Dahun explained to BD SUNDAY that in the course of training, the enlistee could get injured or even die, and the Navy does not have any legal obligation to compensate the enlistee. He added, however, that the military establishment makes every effort to ensure that its personnel do not get injured or get killed while carrying out service.
“But in some instances, sometimes it is inevitable; there could be death or injury and in that case, we make it clear that you are for volunteer service and that by so doing, you know the implications of volunteering for national service,” Dahun explained.
“We are a very cautious organisation. Just because we have put that clause on the enlistment form does not mean that we are going to put your life at risk during the training process, without adequate safeguard. They will go through a very minor physical test, like running. They are not going to through very serious military training. They are only going to be assessed based on their physical fitness. The cases of death during training are highly unlikely,” he said.
According to him, if death occurred during training, it could be that the enlistee hid his or her true medical condition before joining, saying that the military makes serious efforts to ensure that enlistees are medically and physically fit for the training.
He also promised to furnish BD SUNDAY with further documents containing details of conditions that enlistees are required to meet.
By Our Reporters
