A report by the United Nations (UN) has disclosed details about a programme designed by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to entice members of terrorist groups — Boko Haram, the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) — with the aim of deradicalising them and integrating them into society.
Boko Haram, ISWAP, alongside other terrorist elements have been causing havoc in the Northern part of Nigeria. The terrorists have been responsible for the death and abduction of many people. In a move to solve the challenges, the Buhari-led Government deployed many tactics to break the spirit of the recalcitrant terrorists.
Part of the tactics deployed by the Federal Government is a programme tagged ‘Suhlu’, according to the report by the UN.
The report which was titled, ‘The New Humanitarian’, explained that the Suhlu programme is a clandestine Nigerian government programme aimed at reaching out to senior jihadist fighters in the bush to encourage them to abandon their goal of building a caliphate by force of arms, and to defect.
The report further added that the programme was aimed at rehabilitating terrorist who are ready to give up their arms and provide them a means of livelihood.
The development is coming as intelligence agencies have begun investigation into the recent surrender of over 1,200 terrorists and their families in the past weeks.
Many individuals, social groups, activist have decried the plan by the Federal Government to reintegrate terrorist, who have murdered scores of Nigerians, back to the society.
Although the UN report noted that the sulhu programme could open the door to a peace deal which could in turn end the rising cases of insurgency, it argued that the programme would reward terrorists who have committed some many atrocities.
The UN said the report was based on six months of reporting and research.
Accroding to the report, the Sulhu which is run by DSS and the military, but is separate from the army’s much larger disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration initiative, known as Operation Safe Corridor (OSC).
Under Sulhu, defectors are enrolled in a six-month “deradicalisation” course in the military’s demobilisation and reintegration centre in Mallam Sidi, in northeastern Gombe State.
After promising to renounce violence and be good citizens, they are issued with a graduation certificate, signed by a high court judge – and some have then gone on to set up businesses, from cap-making to chicken-rearing, among others.
Citing a case of one of the benefactors of the programme, the report disclosed how Aliyu, one of the former commanders of Boko Haram has a new life now. Aliyu was said to have spent decade fighting with Boko Haram.
The report further added that Aliyu now has a business, lives in a rent-free house and receives a small monthly stipend from DSS.
The report reads in part, “It’s the two wives and four children he left behind when he defected, and the power he once wielded as a jihadist rijal-literally a ‘man’ – in zones under the insurgents’ control.
“In his early thirties, with a wispy goatee, Aliyu has remarried to a forthright woman from the northeastern city of Maiduguri. She is also former Boko Haram, and they have been set up with the rent-free house in Kaduna, a business license, and a small monthly stipend provided by Nigeria’s domestic spy service, better known as DSS”.
