The Defence Headquarters has disclosed that, despite the arrest of approximately 129,000 Boko Haram fighters, only 800 former insurgents have been carefully selected for rehabilitation and reintegration under Operation Safe Corridor.
According to the military, a one-year period is sufficient to reorient and reintegrate ex-terrorists into society.
Speaking on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme, the Chief of Defence, Operations, Maj.-Gen. Emeka Onumajuru, explained the process.
“We are a professional army and when you are in combat and an opponent surrenders, then you take him and let the legal processes take its natural course,” he said.
He further noted, “Right now, some of them are in detention facilities, some of them are in Kainji, and there is a special court that goes through all of them. Those that were found culpable face the books and those that are going to be deradicalised go through the process and this takes about a year.”
Addressing concerns about whether a year is sufficient to deradicalise and reintegrate former terrorists, Onumajuru stated, “It’s possible because the deradicalisation is done by professionals. That one-year period is sufficient enough depending on the people handling the deradicalisation.
“The number taken in is not huge. As I said, we have 129,000 BH members and families. It doesn’t mean the 129,000 are going through the programme. The people going through the programme right now are about 800 – in batches. Those 800 are people that have been sieved through the entire legal process before they are now brought to the centre.”
He also underscored the necessity of combining military force with non-kinetic approaches to effectively combat insurgency in Nigeria.
“The deradicalisation carried out by the Operation Safe Corridor is part of the non-kinetic. You cannot win an asymmetrical war with just a kinetic approach,” he said.
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