Bill For Rehabilitation Of Repentant Boko Haram Members Divides The North

Opinions are divided in the north about the necessity for a government agency for the rehabilitation of ‘repentant’ members of the Boko Haram insurgents.

Former governor of Yobe State, now senator, Ibrahim Gaidam had last week sponsored a bill that seeks to establish an agency for the rehabilitation of repentant Boko Haram members.

The Yobe senator explained that the proposed commission would help repentant insurgents to re-enter mainstream politics, religion and society, stressing that it would promote reconciliation and national unity.

The bill is said to have stirred controversy and divided opinions among northern politicians and elite, some of who expressed outrage at the suggestion.

Dauda Birmo, a former minister of education who spoke to THE WHISTLER on Tuesday, said Gaidam’s proposal would threaten the security of the country, stressing that Nigeria had not reached the stage where insurgents could be properly rehabilitated and monitored.

“It is dangerous to have that kind of agency and it will constitute a potent threat to the security of this country.

“It will be an open support and encouragement for insurgents; its like rewarding terrorism. Our society is still primitive, and we have not reached the level of Europe where you could set up such an agency and monitor the progress of the inmates.”

Instead, Birmo said the lawmaker should be thinking of how the lives of law-abiding people in the north would improve, and not “rewarding people who have inflicted pains on the people.”

But the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) seems to support senator Gaidam’s bill. Secretary General of the group, Anthony Sani, told THE WHISTLER that there was nothing wrong in what the senator was proposing and there was no need for the “hue and cry” over the bill.

He said: “Usually, most members of the insurgency group are recruited by force and radicalized into terrorism.   It is radicalization that brings about ideology among the sects. And given their number and the fact that they’re Nigerians, de-radicalization is often the process that can lead to the rehabilitation and re-integration into the society.

“I do not see anything wrong in having an agency vested with the responsibility of rehabilitating and re-integrating through de-radicalization of repentant members of the sect who surrender their arms.” 

But shedding more light on why he was sponsoring the bill, Gaidam had told the Nation newspaper that the proposed commission would encourage other insurgents still fighting to abandon the group, and afford government the opportunity to use “the defectors to fight the unrepentant insurgents.”

 It will help disintegrate the violent and poisonous ideology that the group spreads as the program will allow some repentant defectors or suspect terrorists to express remorse over their actions repent and recant their violent doctrine and in the long run, re-enter mainstream politics, religion and society.