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It’s risky to rehabilitate repentant insurgents

When in 2018 the military established a camp to ‘rehabilitate and reintegrate surrendered and repentant Boko Haram terrorist members’ via an exercise known as Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC), many Nigerians, including retired and serving military personnel, expressed their concerns. The fear was that these ‘repentant’ fighters could easily game the system by returning to the communities and reenacting their bloody orgies. Against the background of recent reports about the activities of some of these ‘repentant insurgents’, there is a growing consensus that the exercise be discontinued. This was part of the recommendations of a dialogue session in Abuja by the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR). As many participants argued, rehabilitating ‘low risk repentant’ insurgents when the war had not ended is clearly counterproductive.

With the peace and security landscape becoming more complex and hydra-headed, the emerging threats have raised new conflict actors, according to participants at the IPCR session. Violence is not only recurring but has also gone beyond the traditional conflict zones. In some rural communities, banditry has built an illicit economy that is seemingly difficult to dislodge. Hence, the shift from conflict to criminality demands a change of tool-box, participants admonished. These new threats and others from the digital domain and social media, environmental pressures and illegal resource extraction (mining lithium for clean energy industries) deserve to be captured in a comprehensive national peace policy.

In 2012, the IPCR produced the draft of the National Peace Policy (NPP) with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The aim was to address the drivers of conflict across the country. The Economic Community for West Africa (ECOWAS) Vision 2050, the African Union’s ‘Silencing the Guns Initiative’ and ‘Agenda 2030’, as well as the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development have jointly provided a renewed momentum and frameworks for peacebuilding in contemporary times. Besides, the New Agenda for Peace promulgated in 2023 by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, mandates Member states to prioritise “preventing conflict and violence and sustaining peace” considering that the “rising inequalities within and among nations, climate emergency and weaponisation of new technologies” have exacerbated tensions and armed conflicts.

Last August, the IPCR partnered with some other stakeholders to organise the First Dialogue on the review of the national peace policy and came up with some recommendations. In the 2026 edition held recently, the resolutions were directed towards concretising peacebuilding. They include developing a dedicated and sustainable funding for peacebuilding; institutionalising infrastructure for peace at all levels of governance and defining roles for them while building conflict sensitivity into development programming and mainstreaming of emerging threats.

After exhaustive deliberations, the stakeholders recommended that peacebuilding coordination platforms be established at the federal, state and local levels as well as a complementarity between peace builders and security agencies to upscale the prioritisation of human security and the establishment of a community of practice for peace. They also canvassed the framing of peacebuilding pillars to accommodate the roles of youth and women. In recognition of emerging patterns of conflict in mining communities, it was recommended that peacebuilders work with stakeholders in managing conflicts and resource governance. Participants also advocated strengthening of partnerships and enhancing the roles of traditional and religious leaders in mediation, social cohesion and prevention of violent extremism.

There were suggestions about integrating peace education into all formal and informal learning systems; establishing strong accountability mechanisms, as well as embedding legal and legislative measures to protect the longevity and enforceability of the peace policy. It was also agreed that communication management should be prioritised in the implementation of the planned policy framework, just as mental health and psycho-social support and other victim support initiatives should form part of peacebuilding.