Nigeria has long been suffering from terrorism in different forms. Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits, unknown gunmen, and the more recent Lakurawa and Mahmuda groups are names that feature in the news almost daily. According to the United Nations, insurgency in northeastern Nigeria has caused the deaths of over 350,000 people. Banditry in northwestern Nigeria has led to thousands of kidnappings and killings. Recently, insurgency has spread to states such as Niger, Kwara, Oyo, and Ekiti, which had previously been exempt from this issue that was seemingly limited to states such as Borno, Yobe, Katsina, and Kaduna.
While the insurgency and loss of lives and property continue, a chorus of voices within the Nigerian government and military establishment is arguing for something that strikes many Nigerians as deeply counterintuitive — that the answer to terrorism is not to imprison or kill these terrorists, but rather to extend an olive branch and reintegrate them back into the very societies that they wreaked havoc on.
The Nigerian government’s culture of helping terrorists escape justice is not new. In 2016, the Buhari administration launched “Operation Safe Corridor” to rehabilitate and reintegrate surrendered Boko Haram and ISWAP fighters through deradicalisation, vocational training, and counseling before returning them to their communities. In 2018, amnesty was granted to Boko Haram members willing to surrender.
Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, a popular Islamic cleric, has also become unpopular for encouraging the Nigerian government to negotiate with bandits. Time and time again, he has argued that negotiation is the best way to resolve the issue.
What was once a quiet administrative process is now being framed in moral and even spiritual terms. At a Nigerian Armed Forces inaugural lecture, the Chief of Army Defence Staff, General Oluyede, made reference to scripture to explain why the Nigerian government does not kill terrorists even though they have killed others.
“Even in the Bible, we heard about the prodigal son. If there was not a window for the man to turn back, would he have turned back? So the point is that they are Nigerians, and it is important for us to give them that window to repent if they want to, rather than pushing them to the extreme and saying it’s either we kill you or you continue with your adventure,” he said.
While addressing the press at a counter-terrorism meeting, the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, granted an interview in Hausa on the government’s plans to address banditry. His response likened the terrorists to family members; “Now if something happens to your brother, will you deny him? If your hand gets injured, will you cut it off? Your brothers are your brothers. There are many of them who seek peaceful co-existence and want to stop. We are not at war with foreigners, this is a calamity that has come into our own country. God will create understanding between us and our brothers,” he said.
Beyond these troubling statements, it has become increasingly clear that the Nigerian government’s broader posture toward insecurity is lax. The repeated emphasis on dialogue, amnesty, and rehabilitation, exposes a disturbing pattern of avoidance and weakness at the highest level of leadership.
This approach is not entirely new; the Yar’adua/Jonathan administration’s amnesty programme for the Niger Delta militants is frequently cited as a partial precedent, but the current situation is categorically different. The militants of the Niger Delta had coherent political grievances regarding resource allocations and oil spillage.
Boko Haram, ISWAP, and the various bandit organisations operating across the northwest and northeast represent a more vague ideology. Extending goodwill without the capacity to monitor and genuinely rehabilitate former combatants risks creating a revolving door through the insurgency, out through the pardon programme, and potentially back into the active insurgency. It also has given these terrorists the confidence to parade themselves on social media without the fear of being traced. Their brothers are on their side, it seems.
The current administration has taken at least one good step in addressing the security crisis;the replacement of the service chiefs. President Bola Tinubu oversaw a shake-up of the military high command, installing new leadership at the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Defence Staff levels. Proponents argued that fresh leadership would bring new energy, a new strategy, and a break from the institutional flaws that had allowed the security situation to deteriorate so badly under previous administrations.
Whether that reshuffle has translated into meaningful operational improvements remains contested. Banditry in the northwest has continued at alarming rates. Farmer-herder conflicts in the Middle Belt have not reduced significantly. Kidnapping for ransom has become so prominent that it functions as an informal economy. The service chiefs change, the headlines about mass abductions, highway attacks, and village massacres continue with saddening regularity.
Central to any serious conversation about terrorist reintegration is a question the Nigerian government has been reluctant to confront directly: what happens to these individuals once they surrender? Rehabilitation requires institutions capable of rehabilitation. Nigeria’s prison system is, by any honest review, not that.
Chronic overcrowding, understaffing, minimal access to mental health services, rampant violence within facilities, and a near-total absence of genuine vocational or psychological rehabilitation programmes define the Nigerian prison experience for the overwhelming majority of inmates. If the government is serious about transforming former terrorists into productive members of society, it must invest in the infrastructure that enables that transformation. Without meaningful prison reform, the pardon programme is largely symbolic and will surely do more harm than good.
No discussion of the Nigerian government’s management of terrorist detainees can ignore the Kuje Prison break that happened on 5 July, 2022. In one of the most humiliating security failures in Nigerian correctional history, 879 inmates escaped from the medium-security Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja after a coordinated ISWAP attack on the facility. Among those who fled were confirmed members of Boko Haram and ISWAP who had been awaiting trial.
The Kuje disaster exposed the depth of Nigeria’s institutional failure in managing the terror threat. A prison located in the nation’s capital was successfully attacked and breached. Until the correctional system fundamental security architecture is rebuilt, any reintegration policy will fail.
The government’s decision to continue to explore non-military solutions to terrorism lacks proper execution which makes it deeply problematic. Reintegration without rehabilitation infrastructure is not a peace strategy, and pardons granted without accountability mechanisms are not justice, they are acts of denial.
What Nigeria needs is a preventive and independently monitored deradicalisation framework, one that specifies which categories of offenders are eligible for reintegration, what benchmarks must be met before and after release, and how communities that suffered under terrorist violence are consulted and supported. It needs a correctional system that can actually correct.
The Chief of Defence Staff speaks of redemption. But even within those traditions, redemption typically requires genuine repentance, accountability, and changed behaviour, not simply the state’s declaration that forgiveness has been granted. Nigeria’s terrorism problem will not be solved by either capital punishment alone or goodwill alone. It will require the hard, unglamorous, institutionally intensive work of building systems that can hold both justice and mercy (on the off chance they are deserved) at the same time.
As 2027 draws closer, and the pressure of electoral politics begins to warp every security calculation, the question is whether Nigeria’s government has the competence to do that work. The answer, so far, is no.
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