Repentant Boko Haram members are doing well- OPSC coordinator

The coordinator of ‘Operation Safe Corridor’, Major General Bamidele Shaffa, has assured Nigerians of the circumspection in the decision to reintegrate repentant insurgents, into the society. Shaffa disclosed this while representing the Chief of Defence staff, General Abayomi Gabriel Olonishaki, at a meeting with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, in Abuja.

In a statement signed by Rhoda Ishaku Iliya, Assistant Director of Information in the Humanitarian Ministry, Shaffa said: “I wish to state that the group are doing well in their various communities with no report of hostility against them or any case of misdemeanour against anyone of them in the communities where they have been integrated.”
Shaffa debunked stories of the former insurgents being recruited into the military, saying: “No member of the repentant insurgents is qualified to be recruited in the Army.”
Shaffa further explained that the OPSC which was established in 2016, has successfully graduated 280 repentant members of the Insurgency group including two Chadians. He said the repentant insurgents had been transferred to their states and country for re-integration.

Responding, the Minister Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, pledged the support of the Fedreal Government to OPSC, as inclusive efforts to contend the insurgency. Farouq added that the de-radicalisation, rehabilitation and re-integration programme is an opportunity for repentant Boko Haram members to have a re-think and denounce terrorism. “It is a very important programme for the ministry, one of mandate of the ministry is to focus on early recovery aspect of the North-East region and one of such components of early recovery is re-integration, rehabilitation of these affected communities and the repentant Boko Haram Insurgents,” she said.