Gen. Lucky Irabor, the Chief of Defence Staff, revealed on Saturday that between July 2021 and May 2022, 51,828 Boko haram militants and their family members turned themselves in to the Federal Government.
He made this statement while delivering a lecture at the 7th Founders’ Day of the Edo State University, Uzairue in the Etsako West local government area with the subject “National Defence Policy and Transitional Justice Approach in the Battle Against Insurgency in Nigeria.”
In addition, the military chief said that between 2016 and 2022, 1,543 repentant terrorists graduated from the Mallam Sidi camp in Gombe State, while 1,935 were discharged from the Bulumkutu camp in Maiduguri.
According to him, Operation Safe Corridor was developed as a transitional justice strategy and is comparable to the Niger Delta Amnesty program, which the Federal Government launched in 2009 and involved the establishment of special facilities where remorseful terrorists who gave up their weapons could be rehabilitated.
Irabor said that “between July 2021 to May 2022 alone, no fewer than 51,828 Boko haram and their family members have surrendered, out of which 13,360 are fighters.
“The programme (Operation Safe Corridor) offers numerous opportunities and participants are scheduled for vocational training to ease their reintegration into society”, he stressed.
However, despite the program’s modest gains in the fight against crime, according to Gen. Irabor, it still has a lot of obstacles to overcome.
He listed a few obstacles, such as a lack of experts with specialized training and inadequate physical infrastructure, poor collaboration and coordination, a lack of appropriate reintegration legislation, low agency and international participation, and a monitoring system that is ineffective.
A “train-the-trainers program and establishment of special fund for Deradicalization, Reintegration, and Reorientation (DRR), the establishment of a national commission for DRR, enactment of a DRR Act, building of strategic partnerships, and adoption of a whole-of-society approach to monitoring” were suggested by the CDS as a course of action.
Earlier, the state governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, and his deputy, RT. Hon. Com. Philip Shaibu, were praised by the university’s vice chancellor, Prof. Emmanuel Aluyor, for their ongoing support of the institution and for fostering an environment that allowed it to succeed.
Aluyor claimed that over time, the lectures had gradually changed the tone of the Founder’s Day program, which addressed crucial questions about how to make Nigeria the nation of our shared aspirations.
According to him, several of the instructors and researchers are ranked among the top 500 researchers in Nigeria, and the students who studied for the tests given by the Council for nursing and medical laboratories had 100% success rates.