ABUJA— The Nigeria Army Council has recommended the release of Brigadier-General Enitan Ransome-Kuti from custody.

A confidential memo obtained also showed that the council ordered a reduction in his rank from Brigadier-General to Colonel and subsequently recommended that he be reabsorbed and posted back into service.

Brigadier General Kuti was arrested in January 2015 and tried for cowardice, accused of abandoning his duty post in Baga where he was commander of a joint multinational task force.

In 2014, Boko Haram militants attacked his base and took over the armoury, the army court martial which tried Kuti also accused him of not accounting for weapons seized by Boko Haram militants at the base.

Since his conviction, the Brigadier General, who is the son of one of Nigeria’s most prominent human rights defenders, Beko Ransome-Kuti, had remained under house arrest at an army barracks in Abuja.