A Bill To Create Agency For Repentant Boko Haram; Have These People Really Lost It? -By Jeff Okoroafor

On Thursday, February 20th 2020, a bill seeking to deradicalize, rehabilitate, and reintegrate repentant Boko Haram terrorists into the Nigerian society, passed the first reading on the floor of the senate.

This unholy bill also seeks to create an agency, a commission for these terrorists. So far, the Nigerian Government since 2018 has released more than 1,400 self-confessed Boko Haram terrorist back into the society. Last week, I read a report that the Nigerian military were in the process of concluding the rehabilitation of over 1,000 insurgents in various parts of the North-East, a controversial programme it started in 2016.

It is important we all understand what we are currently faced with as far as this Boko Haram insurgency is concerned. On April 2014, Boko Haram abducted 276 Chibok schoolgirls out of which 112 are still in captivity after nearly six years. In February of 2016, they abducted 110 schoolgirls from Dapchi, Yobe State, released 104, killed 5 and still holding one, Leah Sharibu in captivity. In July of 2019, this same terrorists abducted six aid workers of both the ICRC and UNICEF, only Alice Ngaddah is still assumed to be alive today. On January 19, Boko Haram insurgents ambushed two separate Nigerian army patrols, killing 17 and abducting a number of soldiers. Just a few weeks earlier, this terrorists had ambushed a bridal party on December 27, killing Martha Bulus, a young bride set to wed on New Year’s Eve, and her friends. Don’t also forget that in January of this year they beheaded Mr Lawan Andimi, Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Michika, Adamawa State. They have so far killed over 27,000 people since the start of the insurgency 11 years ago.

Last week alone, six different communities were attacked by Boko Haram, including three villages in Chibok.

Nigeria is now a home of internally displaced persons. We have IDP camps spread across the length and breadth of this country. In Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, we have four government recognized IDP camps – Lugbe, Area One, New Kuchingoro, and Kuje. In Lagos, we have the Internally Displaced Person camp. And in Borno State, we have among others, the Bakassi IDP camp in Maiduguri. Putting this in real perspective, the Boko Haram insurgency has displaced nearly 2.4 million people in the Lake Chad Basin. There are over 300,000 refugees in Nigeria, over 3.3 million Internally Displaced Persons, and more than 550,000 Internally Displaced Persons in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These are people who have lost their homes, families, and means of livelihood. People who are unsure of what the future holds for them. People who wonder if they will ever get back home and rebuild their lives.

In an interview with Daily Trust published on February 9, Tukur Buratai, chief of army staff, said 10 years was not even enough to deradicalise an indoctrinated person, yet they are in a hurry to release the so-called ‘repentant’ Boko Haram members, recruit as many as possible into the Nigerian army and unleash them into the society.

Religious extremists never truly and completely repent. The two cases currently witnessed in the UK, where individuals who were said to have passed through their deradicalization program went on to commit a heinous act of terror, are a good example. Also was the case of the ‘repentant’ Mohammed Mamman Nur (the Cameroonian Boko Haram operative) who was released to, and vouched for, by some prominent Northern Emirs, but subsequently went on to mastermind the bombing of the UN building in Abuja in 2011. So you now see why I refer to this bill as an ‘unholy’ bill? How do you overlook the millions of displaced persons, hundreds of ravaged communities, etc, and begin to talk about building luxurious fortresses for the people responsible for their pains and suffering?

If Senator Gaidam and other senators indeed have any sense and humanity left in them, they should focus on enacting laws that will tighten the judicial process for dealing with captured Boko Haram members. It is sad and depressing that monies and resources derived from those people, and lands that these monsters and dregs of society refer to as infidels, is now being used to ‘rehabilitate’ them. As long as this continues, this right against Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria will never end.