Senate’s belated rise against “repentant” terrorists

The Senate has finally given voice to a national outrage that has simmered for too long: Nigeria’s policy of rehabilitating and reintegrating so-called repentant Boko Haram fighters without doing them justice. It has outlived whatever limited utility its creators may once have claimed. A programme that begins with surrender and ends with return to the very society these men once terrorised is not a strategy but a gamble with human lives and public trust, as well as a nursery bed for the aggravation of insecurity.

Operation Safe Corridor (OSC), launched in 2016 under former President Muhammadu Buhari, was sold as a humane pathway out of insurgency. In practice, it has too often looked like a shortcut around justice. There is no science that can neatly decipher repentance in the mind of a terrorist, especially one indoctrinated from childhood into violent jihadism. Even where remorse is sincere, it should not erase accountability. The proper sequence is investigation, prosecution and, only where the law permits, mercy.

The central failure of the programme is moral as well as operational. Victims of Boko Haram’s atrocities are told to endure the return of men linked to slaughter, abductions and the destruction of schools and entire communities. That does not heal society; it deepens the wound. It also sends a dangerous signal to would-be recruits that violence may be followed by a soft landing, rehabilitation and eventual release. In a country already contending with banditry, kidnapping and insurgent splintering, that is an invitation to more bloodshed.

There is also the question of public safety. Men who have passed through the system may have been debriefed, but debriefing is not the same as full de-radicalisation, and de-radicalisation is not the same as trust. Communities that receive them are left to carry the risk. Families that buried loved ones are forced to coexist with their former assailants. The state, meanwhile, assumes a burden it is ill-equipped to monitor.

This is why the Senate’s intervention matters. It should not stop at rhetorical outrage. The Federal Government must suspend the policy, subject all surrendered fighters to proper judicial process, and professionally distinguish clearly between coerced minors, low-level conscripts and hardened killers. Those guilty of atrocities should be held in secure, lawful facilities, tried under due process and made to answer for their crimes before any question of possible leniency arises.

The country does not need a theatre of impunity dressed up as rehabilitation. It needs justice, deterrence and protection for the innocent. If the state cannot guarantee that those who murdered, burned and kidnapped will answer before the law, then it is not securing peace. It is institutionalising fear. The Senate is right to say enough. Operation Safe Corridor must go!

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