Terrorist rehabilitation gamble
By Rekpene Bassey
As Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) still hold sway, the scars of war continue to mar memory in northeastern Nigeria. It is against that background that the government has been testing the boundaries of justice, forgiveness, and national security.
Former insurgents, many of whom were active members of Boko Haram or its more brutal offshoot, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), are being ushered through government-run rehabilitation programmes.
These initiatives, championed as tools of national healing, aim at de-radicalising militants to reintegrate them into communities they once ravaged.
But this bold effort, Operation Safe Corridor, has become a lightning rod for controversy. Nigeria’s embrace of terrorist rehabilitation is as much a necessity as it is a gamble, and the moral, political, and security implications are reverberating across the country.
While military victories against insurgent groups have proven elusive, the government is betting on what some call “soft counterterrorism” – a strategy that combines psychological counselling, religious re-education, and vocational training.
The core question remains deeply unsettling: can perpetrators of terrorism truly be reformed, and if so, should they be welcomed back into the same communities they once brutalised? Nigeria is not the first country to explore these waters. Saudi Arabia’s high-profile rehabilitation model, once hailed as the gold standard, suffered a dramatic setback when one of its alums attempted to blow up an American airliner in 2009. That singular failure echoed loudly and underscored the ever-present threat of recidivism.
In Nigeria, that threat is no longer hypothetical. Security reports and local testimonies suggest that some ex-fighters, after completing rehabilitation, have quietly returned to militant activity. Others, less overtly dangerous, still harbour extremist sympathies. The government has struggled to track their movements post-release, raising questions about the integrity of the entire process. For a country already grappling with overstretched security forces and eroding public trust, the risk of inadvertently fueling the same insurgency it seeks to end is not a distant fear. It is a looming reality.
These programs are not without noble intentions. By extracting intelligence from former fighters, reducing active militant numbers, and signalling a path back to civilian life, proponents argue that rehabilitation could bring about a sustainable end to hostilities. Yet, those very aims also conflict.
A programme built to extract strategic information and nurture trust can be fatally compromised. Intelligence gathering necessitates probing interrogation, while successful rehabilitation requires empathy and reintegration—a contradiction that has not gone unnoticed.
Nowhere is the backlash more visceral than among the communities expected to receive these former terrorists. In towns like Bama, Gwoza, and Chibok areas of mass abductions, executions, and displacements, the return of former insurgents has sparked despair and outrage. Survivors speak of betrayal. In their eyes, the same state that failed to protect them now appears to reward their aggressors with training, stipends, and a second chance.
Amina Umar, a teacher whose husband and brothers were killed in a Boko Haram raid, voiced a sentiment shared by many: “We buried our loved ones with our own hands. These people destroyed everything. And now they come back smiling as if nothing happened.”
This moral reckoning lies at the heart of the crisis. Critics argue that the government has placed national security over justice, leaving victims without restitution or acknowledgement. There has been no systematic compensation programme, no truth-telling mechanism, and few attempts at restorative justice.
By prioritising de-radicalisation without parallel efforts to heal communities and recognise their suffering, Nigeria risks deepening societal fractures and planting the seeds of future unrest.
Even from a policy perspective, the program suffers from gaps. De-radicalisation, when done effectively, must be deeply personalised. It must address the religious, economic, psychological, and political motivations that push individuals toward extremism. But in Nigeria, where thousands have passed through abbreviated rehabilitation cycles, the process is often too superficial, too rushed, and too underfunded.
Assessing whether an individual is truly reformed is an inexact science, even in the best conditions. It often amounts to educated guesswork.
The record of such programmes worldwide is patchy. In Indonesia, theological debates and peer mentoring are used to disarm radical ideologies. In Denmark, a community-based model emphasises inclusion and mentorship. In Sri Lanka, post-conflict efforts for Tamil rebels centred around psycho-social healing and reintegration into family units. These approaches underscore the need for contextual, localised solutions, none of which are easily replicable or scalable.
For Nigeria, the path ahead must begin with honesty. Rehabilitation alone cannot bear the moral and strategic weight of national recovery. The state must also invest in preventive measures, such as strengthening education, curbing youth unemployment, and confronting the chronic marginalisation that made insurgency so appealing in the first place. Reintegration must be earned through transparency, accountability, and active engagement with affected communities.
Perhaps most importantly, victims must not be an afterthought. Any reconciliation effort will remain incomplete without public truth-telling, community healing, and symbolic or tangible justice. A nation cannot heal if it cannot remember or forgive if it cannot grieve.
*Rekpene Bassey is the president of the African Council on Narcotics (ACON) and a security and drug prevention expert.
