WE have always advocated for the “stick and carrot” strategy to ensure a decisive, just and lasting end to the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency that has bedevilled our country in the past 12 years. Anything to the contrary – such as the adoption of the so-called Operation Safe Corridor, OSC, tactics – is a mere cultivation of this expensive threat.
The OSC, which was not even approved by the National Assembly, was introduced in 2016 by the Defence Headquarters, apparently to take delivery of surrendering, “repentant” Boko Haram terrorists, “de-radicalise” and return them to the general populace. After that, life continues, as if nothing happened.
There are several problems with this approach. Shakespeare says: “There is no art to find the mind’s construction on the face”. What parameter do promoters of the OSC deploy to determine that a jihadist fighter has “repented”? Apart from, perhaps, the need to survive the military’s onslaughts, what other incentive would persuade them to “repent”?
What if surrendering is merely a ploy by the jihadists to re-situate their fighters within the vulnerable populace for a future outburst? As it has been reported that many sympathisers, sponsors and enablers of terror enjoy high places in this dispensation, is it not possible that the OSC was created for more sinister ends other than securing our people and country?
What about the 36, 000 (official figure) people who have been killed, including thousands of our gallant troops; hundreds of communities destroyed, women abducted (including the Chibok Girls and Leah Sharibu), over 2.5 million rendered Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs; trillions of naira spent on defence and security by the federal and various state governments in the theatre of the conflict and trillions more lost investment opportunities due to Boko Haram terror? These don’t matter? Nobody pays a price?
Irrespective of the motive behind the OSC programme, we reiterate that it could come to haunt this country in future. The conditions that led to the rise of Boko Haram have worsened. When this combines with the stigma which the populace will visit on these unwanted “repentant” terrorists, a worse form of terror could erupt.
We should have waged a full-scale war on the jihadists, conquered them, profiled them to know the real culprits apart from the conscripts, done justice to all concerned and possibly extended pardon to those deserving of it. This is due process. The factors of deterrence and justice will ensure lasting peace. The OSC agenda offers neither justice nor deterrence. Rather, it is a triumph of jihadist terrorism over the rest of the population that chose to respect the rule of our law and Constitution.
It is a disservice to this country, and we hope that Nigerians will not be made to pay a heavier price for letting it happen.
Editorial vanguard
