No one outside the small circle in the presidency with what amounts to a monopoly of wisdom really thought that it was such a wise idea.
I speak of the so-called policy of de-radicalising the captured foot soldiers of Boko Haram, rehabilitating them and sending back into their communities for re-integration as repentant killer citizens.
Evidence that it was a monumental faux pas homes in regularly like rotten eggs on the face of the government.
The Nigerian Army claimed that it has so far rehabilitated 893 repentant Boko Haram foot soldiers since 2019. The Identity Management Commission is said to have registered 900 of them. With so many foot soldiers taken out of the trenches, you would expect the dwindling number in the ranks of Boko Haram to affect their morale and their capacity to war against the Nigerian state. It appears this is not the fact of the matter.
Two days or so after the second batch of 150 arguably repentant Boko Haram foot soldiers were released early this year into their communities attended by the regular drum beat of claims by the military that the insurgents had been decapitated, Boko Haram turned the claim into a false claim. They attacked and over-ran the 157 Task Force Battalion at Metele, Borno State, and thus showed a) that they had not been decapitated b) that their intelligence was superior to that of the Nigerian armed forces and c) that their determination to humble the Nigerian state was honed on the anvil of brain-washed radicalisation and vicious propaganda. It is not normal for a decapitated group to get their heads back. In war, we keep repeating the question Pilate asked aeons ago: what is the truth?
There have been several instances of our gallant forces being turned into victims of the superior intelligence of the group with their sophisticated weapons to which those held by our forces would only hold the candle. On February 10, the insurgents ambushed our forces, killed 30 of them and burnt their vehicles at Auno village, also in Borno State.
President Buhari felt so touched by the tragedy that he flew to Maiduguri from his overseas trip to condole the army and the people of Borno State. In the face of these and other glaring cases of the resilience of the insurgents, is it right and sensible to talk of de-radicalising, rehabilitating and re-integrating their foot soldiers, all of whom are products of potent radicalisation and propaganda to a cause they do not even understand? Negative, obviously. This is the kind of logic that makes logicians wince.
There is no evidence in human history of one party to a shooting conflict rehabilitating prisoners captured from the other party and sending them back into the same society against whom they took up arms, in the misplaced hope that having been de-radicalised, whatever that means, they would distance themselves from their colleagues and as repentant killer citizens, they would sin no more. Not so.
It goes against common sense and the grains of conventional wisdom. But it seems that the authorities are loathe to admitting their errors and instead of reviewing the policy, choose to soldier on with results that do not celebrate their wisdom. And the shame piles on. Only last week Borno State Government released 601 captured Boko Haram insurgents, paid each of them N20,000 and sent them into their communities as de-radicalised warriors against the Nigerian state. Senator Ali Ndume, representing Borno South in the senate, has consistently picked holes in the government policy. He told a television interviewer last week that one of the de-radicalised Boko Haram foot soldiers rehabilitated by the state government, went home, killed his father and took away his cattle. So much for de-radicalisation; so much for rehabilitation; some repentance.
There are two fundamental and embarrassing errors in the wisdom that undergirds this wise policy of the government. One, rehabilitation is for victims of conflicts, not for their perpetrators, at least not when the conflict or the war is still raging. I could not agree more with Ndume when he said that the programme is “a very misplaced priority that is not supposed to happen.” It is not wise or right to reward those who took arms against the Nigerian state at the expense of their bleeding, groaning and impoverished victims. It is particularly galling that instead of rehabilitating the victims suffering in the various internally displaced camps to give them a new lease of life, the governments choose to rehabilitate the enemies of the people. It beggars belief, believe me.
According to the senator – and it is difficult for anyone to disagree with him – “we still have over one million internally displaced in various camps and host communities and they are still dealing with the trauma of the insurgency and the government is doing this operation safe corridor bringing those people that tortured, killed and maimed. The memories are still fresh in our minds. Why don’t you rehabilitate, resettle the people that are dealing with the trauma and give them start up pack to start their lives in any part of the country?” Good question.
Two, the government took on a programme that only adds to its impotence in the eyes of the insurgents. It amounts to molly-coddling the enemies and creates the sad impression that they are in a stronger position than the Nigerian state. Neither the federal nor the state government has the capacity to monitor those de-radicalised, rehabilitated and sent into the communities.
I wonder if the government ever gave a thought to their repentant insurgents with money in their pockets turning into informed informants against the Nigerian state. Do the federal and Borno state governments have any reasons to believe that these young men would not easily reconnect with their colleagues in Sambisa forest and their other command posts?
Funding the so-called de-radicalised fighters adds more than a pinch of salt to our collective sense of injury and even helplessness. Since these non-state actors took on the Nigerian state in 2009, they, rather than the state, have exercised the monopoly of deciding where, when and how the war would be waged. Continued exhibition of the impotence of the Nigerian state in the face of the Boko Haram not to let us sleep with our two eyes closed, is only compounded by this amnesty programme and policies that are not wise or sensible or right.
When Buhari visited Borno State on February 12 and was booed into town by citizens giving vent to their anger and the rising insecurity in the state, he said, “I am surprised that Boko Haram is still alive.” I think we can take that as the clue to the de-radicalisation, rehabilitation and re-integration programme of the foot soldiers because the president believes that the insurgents have become history. I would hate to think that the programme is a product of misinformation in the presidency.
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