Emmanuel Onani 
The Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has revealed that a total of 2,168 repentant terrorists, now known as ex-combatants, have graduated from the De- radicalisation, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration (DRR) pro- gramme. As part of measures to encourage Boko Haram, and Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists to surrender, and turn a new leaf, the Federal Government had, in 2015, established Operation Safe Corridor (OSC) with headquarters in Gombe State.
New Telegraph reports that the core mandate of OSC is the de-radicalisation and rehabilitation of the surrendered fighters, preparatory to their reintegration into their respective societies. The safe corridor took-off fully in 2016, when the committee to “operationalize” the establishment mandate was constituted by the then Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Gabriel Olonisakin. Responding to our correspondent’s inquiry on the number of former enemies of state that have graduated from the reformation programme since its inception, the Director of Defence Media Operations, Maj-Gen. Edward Buba, said: “Total number of clients that have graduated from DRR Operation Safe Corridor is 2,168.”
The figure shows over a 600 rise from what it was last year, when an additional 559 former outlaws graduated. At the 2022 graduation ceremony, the then coordinator of the programme, Maj-Gen. Joseph Maina, had stated thus: “Since September 2015, the Federal Republic of Nigeria…established the Operation Safe Corridor to encourage willing and repentant Boko Haram members to surrender and go through a well-structured rehabilitation and de-radicalisation and re-integration programmes.
“This programme began effectively in 2016 by the committee constituted by the chief of defence staff to operationalize the mandate of the Commander-in-Chief. “Consequently, personnel were drawn from the 17 services, ministries, departments and agencies to execute the concept of operation. Since the DRR camp became fully operational, a total of 1070 ex-combatants have successfully gone through the programme and have been reintegrated into society.”
Meanwhile, a retired State Director of the Department of State Services (DSS), Mr. Mike Ejiofor, has alleged that the programme “is not working”. The security expert, who made his position known in a telephone interview, said the DRR initiative would have come at the end of the counter-insurgency war. His words: “If you have de-radicalised over 2000 since then, and … they are killing our soldiers, where are the people fighting?
“As far as I’m concerned, that de-radicalisation programme, for me, is not working. “And, I’m not encouraging it, because you can only do that when the war is over; not when they are fighting, and you are de-radicalising some people, who are bent, and not even listening.”
