It takes time to wean terrorists from morbid ideology that drives their acts —Mimiko

ON programme of reintegration of repentant Boko Haram members into society:

I think the  Nigerian government really needs to be careful and exercise some more caution on this matter. While I understand why government may want to dangle the offer of amnesty at members of the Boko Haram sect, it is important that you do not rush to reintegrate the so-called repentant members into the mainstream of society. It takes time to wean these elements from the type of morbid ideology that drives their acts. What this means is that the process of re-socialising them should be long drawn out, and very well calibrated to ensure they are completely healed of the malady before you take them back in into the society. This is what most countries that had walked this path before us had to do. Some examples are the United States, Sri Lanka, and Colombia.

It is also of great importance not to package and deliver a reintegration programme that is quite salacious and so good to suddenly make being a member of the dreaded sect attractive to the average youth on the street, who though socially deprived, may ordinarily not want membership of Boko Haram. This is what, to my mind, propositions like goverment’s determination at getting the former sect members deployed into the security agencies, sending them abroad for education, or providing them with rehabilitation facilities that are evidently much better appointed than the camps of those displaced by their activities, the IDPs, tend to suggest.

Overall, I think government needs to be a little more careful and deliberate about these things. The Nigerian society is too fragile to admit of the evident rush with which government seems to be going about the project. The continuing expansion  of the parameters of terror, and the wanton  destruction that goes with that, hardly justify the speed at which government seems to be driving this agenda. The place of research uptake in all of these nation-building initiatives can also not be underestimated. I do not know how much of research was commissioned that provided the basis for the programme.

So, caution is advised. Well, except of course if government is in possession of some compelling pieces of information on these whole issues that the public is not privy to.

• Mimiko is a professor of political science from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State.