The Defence Headquarters (DHQ) on Monday disclosed that 800 former Boko Haram fighters who surrendered to the military are currently undergoing deradicalisation for onward re-integration into the society.
The Chief of Defence, Operations, Maj.-Gen. Emeka Onumajuru, made this known to press.
According to him, one year is enough time to re-orient and reintegrate the ex-terrorists into the larger society. He said though about 129,000 Boko Haram fighters have been arrested so far, only 800 former fighters were carefully selected to participate in the rehabilitation and reintegration project tagged Operation Safe Corridor.
Maj-Gen Onumajuru said, “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.”
Asked whether it was possible to deradicalise terrorists and reintegrate them into the society in one year, the top military officer 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. 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 stressed that kinetic and non-kinetic strategies must go hand-in-hand for Nigeria to win the asymmetric warfare against insurgents.
“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.
