The Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has announced that 800 former Boko Haram fighters are undergoing de-radicalisation and rehabilitation.
This programme, tagged Operation Safe Corridor, aims to reintegrate these ex-terrorists into the society.
The Chief of Defence Operations, Maj.-Gen. Emeka Onumajuru, made the announcement while speaking on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme on Monday, 10 February, 2025.
Onumajuru, who said the deradicalisation process takes about a year and is carried out by professionals, added that the approach is crucial in winning the asymmetric warfare against insurgents, as a purely kinetic approach is insufficient.
“To get the numbers right, right now, (we have) about 129,000 surrendered BH (Boko Haram) members and their families.
“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.
“Right now, some of them are 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.”
“The deradicalisation carried out by the Operation Safe Corridor is part of the non-kinetic. You cannot win an asymmetrical war with just kinetic approach,” he added.
When asked whether it was possible to deradicalise terrorists and reintegrate them into the society in one year, Onumajuru said, “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. Like 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.”
