Mixed Reactions Trail Federal Govt’s Plan To Reintegrate 613 Repentant Terrorists

Nigerians have expressed mixed feelings following the disclosure by the federal government to reintegrate 613 repentant terrorists after their rehabilitation.

The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Lucky Irabor, disclosed this during the fifth stakeholders’ meeting of Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC), on Thursday in Abuja.

Irabor who was represented by the Chief of Defence Training and Operation, Maj Gen Adeyemi Yekini, said the 613 rehabilitated terrorists were currently undergoing deradicalisation and rehabilitation handled by the OPSC.

The CDS said that the meeting would exhaustively discuss the Deradicalisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DRR) Programme ahead of the transfer of the rehabilitated clients to their state governments.

However, the decision has unsettled some Nigerians who are afraid of the terrorists having a relapse and going back to continue with their mayhem.

One of the northern elites who preferred anonymity, said the idea is a bad one and asked the government to establish modalities to monitor them. “To me actually it is a bad idea, they may go back to the bush and continue terrorising us as it was the case in the past,” he said.

A public and private security analyst and trainer, Major Banjo Daniel (retd)

told me that reintegration of repentant terrorists has been going on since and it’s not going to end soon. He said the former president, Goodluck Jonathan had set precedence with the Presidential Amnesty Programme and the pardon of militants. He said criminals ought to be punished and not rewarded with rehabilitation and reintegration into a community they once terrorised.

“Rehabilitating them and sending them back to their communities, how would the people feel? It is a dicey situation. Already the community members, or let’s say most community members in the Northeast are under the protection of bandits and insurgents.

“If the government cannot protect them and then the bandits, insurgents offer to protect them,they will accept,” Major Daniel said, adding that if the rehabilitated terrorists are sent into those communities, some of their victims will want to retaliate.

“Criminals should be dealt with according to justice system,our legal system too has a problem and we really need to sit down and look at it.

It’s the legislative that should go against it and find a way around making it illegal but they are not. Unfortunately the community members do not have a say concerning the reintegration programme. The president probably has a reason for this move” he said

However, president, Northern Consensus Movement (NCM),an amalgamation of 593 Community Base Sociocultural and Economically inclined Northern Associations  Dr. Awwal Abdullahi Aliyu said it was not out of place to reintegrate terrorists who have turned a new leaf.

He said “as far as we are concerned,these people are humans just like every other human being, secondly even in America,UK,China or across  Europe, the essence of imprisonment itself is rehabilitation.