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Dear non- Christian readers and fans of Security File, forgive my starting off this column with a quote from the Christian Holy Book, the Bible. It’s for the purpose of butressing a point: Genesis 9:6 says “Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man”. In the same vain, the Quran is also explicit on the issue of murder.Simply put, God hates the shedding of innocent blood. This was why when Cain killed Abel, severe punishment was meted out on him.
Now, the Nigerian government is actively pursuing the rehabilitation of “repentant” bandits and terrorists, primarily through the Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC) framework. This program aims to deradicalize, rehabilitate, and reintegrate (DRR) low-risk individuals into society. However, the policy is already eliciting controversy among Nigerians, with significant public, political, and security skepticism surrounding the effectiveness, appropriateness, justice and morality of reintegrating individuals who have committed severe crimes, in this case, premeditated murders.
According to holy scriptures- in the book of Numbers 35:20-21-”but if he thrust him of hatred, or hurl at him by laying of wait, that he die; Or in enmity smite him with his hand, that he die: he that smote him shall surely be put to death; for he is a murderer: the revenger of blood shall slay the murderer, when he meeteth him”. This Bible verse (old testament) shows that anyone who wilfully kills another person deserves to be put to death- to suffer the same fate of his victim!
Records show that operation safe corridor is a Nigerian initiative by the security agencies launched in 2015-2016, designed to de-radicalize, rehabilitate, and reintegrate “repentant” Boko Haram insurgents, specifically focusing on low-level, non-lethal combatants. The program, managed by the Defense Headquarters, aims to provide vocational training, psychological support, and ideological reorientation to surrendered terrorists and facilitate their return to the society.
Critics and opponents of the policy are wondering why a security organisation should take it upon itself to forgive murderers without a recourse to the law and the courts.What it shows,and the understanding of many Nigerians bemused is that the Defence Headquarters and by extension the Nigerian government does not see anything evil in terrorists and terrorism. And that terrorism pays. That there is no consequence for terrorism; for murdering defenseless citizens. More painful is that most times, while the so called repentant terrorists are courted, pampered and cared for by the government, victims of their devilish terror acts are left to their fate. It is repugnant to sensibilities that died hard, stone- hearted terrorists who invaded a village , picked out women amongst their victims- pregnant women and and heinously slashed their bellies leaving them to bleed to death while the unborn babies are violently removed and smashed are forgiven just because they now claim they have become repentant. This is rewarding evil!
How can terrorists who surrounded a village, sporadically shot at innocent children and unarmed men and women and excitedly screamed “Allah’s” praises for giving them “victory” be forgiven and reintegrated into the society? It runs counter to the law of natural Justice!
How can we forgive a group of murderers who invaded a village and set houses ablaze without any remorse?
How can we forgive armed terrorists who invaded a community and at gunpoint, herded almost everyone in the community into the forest and then put billions of Naira on their heads as ransoms that must be paid before they are released?.
Most times, even when the ransoms are paid, instead of releasing the victims, they are murdered in cold blood, yet someone is telling us they have repented and that we must forgive, rehabilitate and reintegrate them into a sane society. This is bowing to terrorism!
Those behind operation safe corridor have no conscience.They think in reverse.
When God said an eye for an eye in the holy book, he did not make a proposal that man should create a corridor to reverse such a decision.Why then would the Defense Headquarters create a corridor for repentance and forgiveness? If we must accept the policy, then there is no need for the war against terrorism and we shouldn’t have spent billions of Naira on military hardware to fight terrorists and terrorism. We should have simply allowed them to execute their motives: Strike and kill innocent Nigerians in cold blood and later we create a corridor for them to “repent” and after ‘repentance” we pamper them, give them a pat on the back and then pronounce them forgiven!
The terrorists that were claimed to have surrendered and repented, , was there any proof of serious interrogation of them? What did the Defence Headquarters do with the information gathered from the interrogation? Nigerians will like to know because such information ought to have helped security agencies to be on top of their game in terms of stopping terrorism in the country.
I recall that the anti- Robbery Squad of the police subjected every arrested armed robbers to serious interrogation from where valuable information were extracted. This information were eventually used to track down other robbery gangs. Most of the notorious robbers arrested were sequel to the information gathered through interrogation which led to the decline of crime. That was result of proactivtiness from the Nigerian police.It is such proactivness that Nigerians need in the fight against terrorism. There is a thin line between terrorists and an armed robbers. While terrorists are propelled by a religious ideology, armed robbers are propelled by self enrichment mentality.Both believe in killing and shedding of blood.While terrorists kidnap for ransom to purchase more arms, the armed robber kill to steal and enrich himself. Terrorists who claim to have repented and embraced the policy of operation safe Corridor are pretenders.We all know that a chameleon can never change its spots,so also are terrorists that are propelled by a destructive religious ideology and have shedded innocent blood.
Armed robbers do not operate on the basis of religious ideology.As I said earlier, their main motive is to make money by robbing their victims of their money, property or personal effects.There was the case of an armed robber who later turned a new leaf to become a preacher.It was easy for him to do so because he was not propelled by a religious ideology.
An ideology is a structured system of ideas, beliefs, values, and attitudes that characterizes a particular group, culture, or political party. This is why terrorists hardly deviate from their ideologies. This also explains why Nigerians are apprehensive about the safe corridor policy for the terrorists.
How are we sure that operation safe corrdior has not provided an avenue for the terrorists to understudy our military plans, observe and pass credible information back to their leaders in the the forests? Security experts opine that such collated and passed information could have played roles in the state of surprise attacks on our military facilities in the war zones that have claimed the lives of many Nigerian soliders and their commanders. If truly operation safe corridor is meant to deradicalize, rehabilitate, and reintegrate repented terrorists, one would have expected the over 2000 repentant terrorists be kept in an isolated secured area in the country. Nigeria should borrow a leaf from the experience in Guantanmo bay where the then US president, George W. Bush held thousnands of terrorists suspects and “illegal enemy combatants” during America’s “war on terror”
Either arrested or repentant, terrorists should completely be isolated from human environments and made to pay for his crimes. If the Federal Government is unwilling to make terrorists pay for their crime, it should create a facility akin to Guantanmo bay, sort of a concentration camp where the “surrendered” and “repented” terrorists are held perpetually and made to till the soil to feed themselves as punishment for their crimes against humanity.
Like the late Afrobeat maestro, Fela Anikulapo kuti said in one of his songs, “criminals as animals in human skin”.
A man that voluntarily joined a criminal group has a motive and an intention
It’s not the same as a man that was forcefully recruited. As a security journalist, I have been opportuned to interview potential and recruited terrorists and I found a difference between both.I have slept in a war zone, specifically in Bama, in Borno state under the permission and protection of the Army and again, my observation was that there’s a difference between a recruited terrorists and a potential terrorists.
Recruited terrorists are those captured during kidnap operations or through raiding of a village. Many of those arrested during terrorists raid never liked the group , they abhor every thing about the group and would not like to be associated with the group. This set of people are the ones who make effort to escape from terrorists’ camps. However, on the other hand, there are those who voluntarily joined terror groups but could not withstand their torture and training. These are the ones that find escape route for themselves. They are mainly women, youths and the elderly. There are also those who are released to pretend as if they want to surrender so that they can obtain information.These are dangerous members of the terror groups. And This is why I have always advocated that every interrogation of surrendering terrorists should be handled by a combined team of drawn from military intelligence,the police and and the Department of State Security(DSS), if not I see a situation where the excerise- Operation Safe Corridor- boomerangs on the the country.
