ON the morning of September 6, a 78-year-old man climbed aboard a green-white-green “Borno State Government Free School Bus”. Alkali Musa Kukawa was returning home for the first time since 2014 – to his family, the two wives and 34 children he’d been torn away from.

“I’m happy, I’m so happy,” he says, his voice strained with emotion, tears brimming in his age-worn eyes.

The time in-between had been spent in Boko Haram captivity, then on military camps where he underwent de-radicalisation, was rehabilitated and is now ready to be reintegrated into society. He is not alone.

His 25-year-old son Ali, who had shared captivity and rehabilitation with him, is also coming home.

A total of 300 men who have lived the same experience are also going back to Borno. They have been labelled the “repentant Boko Haram fighters”.

At least 300 more are left behind, and this is their rehabilitation journey.

What is Operation SAFE CORRIDOR?

The Boko Haram insurgency in the North East is being fought on many fronts. Nigeria’s response is twofold: a kinetic and a non-kinetic response.

The kinetic is the hard-knock Operation LAFIYA DOLE; the non-kinetic is the soft-slap Operation SAFE CORRIDOR.

A former orientation camp for National Youth Service Corps in Mallam Sidi, Gombe, has now become the heart of intense efforts to de-radicalise, rehabilitate and re-integrate hundreds of men who had contact with Boko Haram insurgents. The so-called “repentant Boko Haram members” who have been on the news for years.

Operation SAFE CORRIDOR is what its name says: providing repentant members of Boko Haram/Islamic in West Africa State Province a “SAFE CORRIDOR” to return to society. It is different from the amnesty programme that followed the conflict in the Niger Delta. The “repentant” are actually former abductees of Boko Haram and terrorist suspects, and they are “clients”.

The DRR Camp has so far graduated a few of the clients in batches 2 and 3 since 2016 and a special batch in 2019. That same year, 290 more clients came on 22 November 2019. Kukawa and his son were among that number.

On 14 December, another 316 clients were taken into the camp. Kukawa’s two other sons were among them. The clients known as Batch 4/2019, were 606 in number.

Right place, wrong time and a 15-day Walk

Kukawa, from Maiduguri, was living in a little Cameroonian border town when he was taken hostage by terrorists and taken to Sambisa Forest. He witnessed the weeks before the group split into two factions: Shekau and al-Barnawi.

“One of the factions kept us. I have been praying to God to make a way for me to escape,” he says. “God finally answered my prayer.”

The answer was his son Ali, also taken hostage by the terrorist. He was 25, a father and a husband. Father and son sitting side by side in the camp’s green slacks and white t-shirt narrating their ordeals. It is Friday, a half free day, and sports is scheduled for later in the day.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/repentant-boko-haram-a-look-at-operation-safe-corridor-deradicalisation-and-rehabilitation-camp/