Many joined terrorism to make ends meet —Nwolise

IS the establishment of an agency a solution to ending insurgency?

I attended a conference on management of violent extremism in Abeokuta and a mighty book has been published out of it. I handled the area of best practices in the management of terrorism and insurgencies looking at Singapore and Egypt and how they handled their insurgents/terrorists In some countries, they do exactly what Nigeria is doing. Those who surrendered or repented were taken to an exclusive and excluded area, they are de-radicalised and then rehabilitated. Those who want to go to school are helped to gain admissions to schools. Those who want to learn driving are taught how to drive. This is done because the original reason they joined the group, for most of them, is not ideology. There was a case of two young men who joined Al-Qaeda and when they were captured, they revealed that they joined because they were being paid for joining as well as receiving other monetary benefits. Many of those in Boko Haram joined out of joblessness and hopelessness. The insurgents that surrendered on their own and those who have repented are not to be shunned or just sent away. Efforts must be made to identify and solve what brought them to the situation they are now: poverty and unemployment.

So, if they are given a skill or trained, they can be released back to the society and create a mechanism to monitor their activities. The Nigerian military that has been rehabilitating them should be able to monitor their progress and report back to the government and the public. A communication process like this will allay the fears expressed by the people.

Between the military and an agency which is the best to de-radicalise and rehabilitate repentant insurgents?

It is not the job of the military to handle issues of repentant Boko-Haram members. This is an issue I treated extensively in my valedictory lecture which I gave at the Nigerian Army resource centre and which I entitled: “Bullets kill the terrorist and the insurgent, but not his ideas.” It advocated the deployment of non-military measures in the North-East in order to solve the problems that are there. The people in the North-East have been suffering. Nigerians don’t even know there is war going on. The state also failed to educate Nigerians to know the type of suffering our soldiers are going through. Our military are facing four types of warfare in the North-East. There is the conventional warfare they are trained for. There is psychological warfare; there is terrorism/insurgency and there is spiritual warfare which they don’t even have knowledge of how to handle. What do I mean by spiritual warfare, before the Boko Haram people make any move, they carry out what I call ‘strategic spiritual intelligence,’ they have their mallams and their imams who tell them when to move, where to attack and how to have maximum results. Our soldiers are thinly spread on ground because they are being overused and overstretched. Many of them are in peace support operations abroad. Soldiers are in almost the 36 states of the federation pursuing armed robbers, kidnappers, cultists. These are not the jobs of the soldiers. During the Dapchi kidnapping, people were asking where was the army? And I was saying, do we now want our army to go and become gatekeepers in secondary schools? People were not asking where were the police? This is because the state has totally neglected the police from the days of Lugard.

There are fears about absorbing repentant insurgents into the military as a strategy to fight Boko Haram.

Absorbing insurgents into the military has its positive and negative sides. While not all of them qualify to be absorbed, there are those who know a lot about the others still fighting; they know their weapons and a host of information that the military would need. So, it is left for the military authorities to identify the negatives and neutralise them if they must be absorbed into the military.

If adopted, would this strategy be fair to Nigerians?

The plan to absorb insurgents into the military is a reflection of the injustice in the land. What of the OPC, IPOB, MASSOB who did not carry arms but were banned? Their members were supposed to be rehabilitated and given the opportunity of being absorbed into the military also. What about the Niger Delta militants? All of the youths involved in these groups were as a result of unemployment, so they qualify to be absorbed into the military. However, I don’t have anything against absorbing insurgents, especially for strategic reasons which would benefit the military’s fight against terrorism. But these must be done openly and not shrouded in secrecy to reduce the fears of the people. If the repentant insurgents are not rehabilitated they will definitely go back and join the group.  Even if they are imprisoned, the aim should be correctional and geared towards making them better citizens after their jail terms. They should be trained or equipped to come out with entrepreneurial skills that can make them cater for themselves.