The Nigerian government is celebrating the imminent graduation of over 700 former Boko Haram fighters from its deradicalisation programme while peaceful protesters from 2020 remain behind bars without trial. The contrast is difficult to ignore.
Brigadier-General Yusuf Ali, Coordinator of Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC), announced the development on April 16, 2026, during a media tour of the Deradicalisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration Centre in Gombe, North-East Nigeria. The 700-plus "clients," as the military calls them, have completed deradicalisation, psychosocial counselling, and vocational training in skills such as tailoring and welding, and are now ready for community reintegration.
Established between 2015 and 2016 at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency, OPSC processes only surrendered, screened, low-risk former combatants not, the Defence Headquarters stresses, hardcore terrorists. The programme has yielded useful intelligence that has helped weaken insurgent networks, according to the military.
The security case for it is real. Fatalities from terrorist attacks in Nigeria rose 46 per cent in 2025, reaching 750 deaths, with civilians accounting for 67 per cent of that total. Over 5,000 suspected insurgents are currently in government detention, straining the criminal justice system. If rehabilitation reduces recruitment and breaks the cycle of violence, the argument has genuine merit.
But academic research raises serious doubts. Studies have found that OPSC is undermined by a lack of legal framework, weak public trust, and the firm refusal of host communities, people who lost family members to these same fighters, to accept returnees. There are no public accountability mechanisms, no transparency about what crimes the 700 individuals committed, and no indication that victims had any voice in the process.
The deeper problem, however, is the double standard.
In October 2020, Nigerian youth marched peacefully under the #EndSARS banner, demanding the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a police unit documented to have carried out extrajudicial killings, torture, and extortion. On October 20, 2020, security forces opened fire on protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, killing and wounding several people. The ECOWAS Court of Justice later found credible evidence of disproportionate force and violations of the rights to life, liberty, free speech, and dignity.
By October 2023, three years later , at least 15 of those protesters were still detained without trial at Kirikiri and Ikoyi correctional centres in Lagos. Amnesty International documented torture: one detainee described being bound, suspended on an iron bar, and beaten with a machete and wooden batons.
In August 2024, history repeated itself. When Nigerians returned to the streets under the #EndBadGovernance banner to protest record inflation and economic hardship, 124 people were arrested across Abuja, Kano, and Kaduna, including children aged 14 to 17. Ten of those arrested were charged with treason, an offence carrying a possible death penalty. Some arrived at court malnourished and covered in rashes.
In July 2025, journalist Buhari Olanrewaju Ahmed and activist Saidu Musa Tsaragi were arrested in Kwara State for criticising the government's crackdown on protesters online.
The arithmetic of Nigerian justice, then, reads like this: bomb a village as a Boko Haram fighter, surrender, and the state funds your rehabilitation and throws you a graduation ceremony. Carry a placard demanding police accountability, and you face years in detention without trial or a treason charge that could end your life.
Operation Safe Corridor is not, in principle, wrong. Deradicalisation programmes have worked in Colombia, Germany, and elsewhere. But legitimacy requires transparency, victim participation, and consistent application of the law. A government that rehabilitates those who waged war on it while prosecuting those who peacefully criticised it has not found a path to peace. It has simply decided whose suffering counts.
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