Reintegration as Political Settlement: Power, Legitimacy, and the Limits of Nigeria’s Operation Safe Corridor Programme

Introduction

Nigeria’s Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC) programme, which is a non-kinetic peacebuilding framework designed to rehabilitate low-risk repentant Boko Haram fighters and reintegrate them into society, has continued to face some backlash. Despite official claims of a less than 1% recidivism rate (which could not be independently verified), recent incidents involving suspected rehabilitated fighters have renewed concerns about recidivism and the adequacy of Nigeria’s post-rehabilitation monitoring and risk-assessment mechanisms. These incidents reinforce earlier scholarly concerns about weak post-release monitoring mechanisms and deficient risk-assessment tools within Nigeria's Disarmament, Deradicalisation, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration (DDRR) framework. Moreover, while OPSC includes initiatives to assist victims, research continues to question the legitimacy of Nigeria’s policy framework that appears to prioritise the rehabilitation of perpetrators of violence at the expense of their victims. This legitimacy question is reflected in an online poll, which shows serious rejection of amnesty for terrorists. Against this backdrop, a critical question emerges: are Nigeria's DDRR programmes merely instruments of political settlement and state authority, or do they represent a credible long-term strategy capable of generating sustainable peace and security? This article examines this question through the lens of OPSC in northeastern Nigeria, drawing on many years of field experience in Boko Haram research and secondary literature. 

OPSC as an instrument of political settlement and state authority

The OPSC is the federal government’s non-kinetic mechanism for rehabilitating and reintegrating low-risk Boko Haram defectors. Beyond being a technical DDRR programme, it also functions as a political instrument through which the state seeks to negotiate an end to insurgency while reasserting authority. As such, the OPSC offers incentives for terrorists’ defection and reintegration into society, exposing it to both objective and subjective assessments as an instrument of political settlement. 

Objectively, the OPSC alters the cost-benefit calculations of insurgents, weakens their cohesion, and restores state authority in conflict-affected areas. This is a positive fallout of the framework, which highlights why the continuation of the programme could be necessary. In the same way, it creates an opportunity for state actors to gain a better understanding of terrorists’ organisational and operational dynamics, which is essential for rooting them out from within. Research has highlighted the potential of Nigeria’s OPSC to serve as a model for other neighbouring countries, given its combination of ideological reorientation with structural grievance and post-exit trauma. Also, military management of the programme may limit political manipulation, but it has also complicated the transition from rehabilitation to community reintegration. This gives rise to the subjective assessment of the OPSC, reflecting a negative fallout.

Subjectively, the OPSC mimics power inequalities, leading to inclusion-exclusion politics that raise concern about institutional credibility and the incentivisation of insurgents on the one hand and the lack of sufficient attention to the victims of their violent crimes on the other hand. At the higher level, politicians complained bitterly about their non-inclusion in the design and delivery of the OPSC, leading to a paucity of political buy-in at the initial stage. At the subnational and national levels, political leaders, including Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State and Senator Ali Ndume, expressed their preference for increased military engagement rather than amnesty for the insurgents. In July 2020, for instance, Senator Ndume alleged that a repentant terrorist who was recently reintegrated into his community went back to insurgency after killing his father and stealing his valuables. Legislative efforts to institutionalise DDRR have also faced resistance from lawmakers who argued that affected communities were insufficiently consulted, underscoring the importance of political buy-in for programme success. At the community level, concerned individuals and victims of terrorism perceive the OPSC as a political instrument to placate those who take up arms against the state at the expense of law-abiding victims, largely because the process of identifying and categorising the insurgents as low-, medium-, or high-risk terrorists is still shrouded in opacity. Thus, the OPSC has simply become a package for political settlement, where connected individuals might receive preferential treatment even as high-risk terrorists. These perceptions undermine the programme’s legitimacy by suggesting that former combatants receive greater attention than victims.

Prospects of broad legitimacy for the OPSC as a long-term peacebuilding strategy

Common perception in Nigeria is that the OPSC serves as a conduit for pardoning Boko Haram terrorists and recruiting them into the army, a claim that both the Nigerian military and the OPSC coordinators have countered. Nevertheless, while the OPSC says it is not an amnesty programme and that those admitted undergo judicial scrutiny, the public, including the National Assembly, still views it as such.  This perception challenges the programme's legitimacy. Notwithstanding, the OPSC can still gain sustainable legitimacy as an instrument of long-term peace, particularly at a time when affected communities are gradually accepting the cost-benefit value of the programme amid protracted violence and unsuccessful counterterrorism efforts at defeating the Boko Haram insurgency. 

In addition, the Borno Model, introduced in 2021, offers a complementary community-driven approach to DDRR. Its 2:1 livelihood support formula, where two victims receive economic assistance for every reintegrated ex-combatant, aims to restore a sense of fairness and strengthen public trust through community participation and transparent screening procedures. Given this, careful refinement of the OPSC, drawing on insights and lessons from the Borno Model, can transform it into a credible long-term peacebuilding instrument that enjoys broad public legitimacy, rather than one perceived as serving primarily political and security negotiations in the northeast. By incorporating the concerns of victims of terrorism and affected communities, the OPSC can gain sustainability and legitimacy despite backlash from lawmakers and the initial rejection by local communities severely impacted by terrorism.

What is to be done?

Existing studies demonstrate that defeating terrorism through kinetic measures alone is limited, which underscores the imperativeness for a non-kinetic approach through DDRR. Experience from Nigeria’s Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) in the Niger Delta shows that DDRR initiatives can reduce violence while simultaneously empowering former combatants as influential political stakeholders. Although the OPSC has not generated a similar outcome in the northeast, the tendency to conflate it with amnesty to Boko Haram terrorists undermines community buy-in and voluntary community acceptance necessary for the programme’s success. Officials maintain that OPSC is not an amnesty programme and that many beneficiaries are former abductees or individuals coerced into Boko Haram. Nevertheless, public scepticism remains strong, and distinguishing rescued victims from voluntary participants continues to be a major challenge.

That said, it will be difficult for the OPSC to succeed beyond the current near-involuntary acceptance of the programme if there are no concerted efforts to strengthen public confidence in the programme, prioritise affected victims, and refine strategic communication. To start with, a major source of concern challenging public acceptance of the OPSC is the opacity surrounding the categorisation of the Boko Haram delegates into low-, medium-, and high-risk individuals. This opacity is worsened by limited public understanding of the programme objectives. Addressing this problem requires making the screening procedures and the eligibility criteria for inclusion in the programme more transparent. This helps to reduce misinformation while enhancing institutional legitimacy.

In addition, the OPSC should aim to replicate the Borno Model at a wider level to fully prioritise victims of terrorism. While the recent 2:1 livelihood initiative represents an important lesson, long-term legitimacy requires sustained investment in victim rehabilitation, livelihood restoration, psychosocial support, and ultimately community reconciliation. Reintegration is not likely to gain broad acceptance where victims perceive that former terrorists receive disproportionate state attention.

Finally, the entire spectrum of Nigeria’s non-kinetic programmes against terrorism and insurgency should be guided by strategic communication. The implication is that the inconsistent public messaging by critical security actors should be addressed to forestall public perception that OPSC is an amnesty for terrorists rather than a restorative justice programme. Strengthening the OPSC, therefore, requires more than effective rehabilitation of ex-terrorists. It should be anchored in a credible social contract binding the state, victims, and reintegrated actors. Achieving this will depend on transparent governance, meaningful victim-centred policies, credible post-reintegration monitoring, and coherent strategic communication capable of sustaining public trust in Nigeria's broader counterinsurgency efforts.

Conclusion

The article argues that although DDRR programmes may reduce large-scale violence, they can also reproduce forms of political and economic exclusion that elevate former combatants within post-conflict power structures. The experience of the OPSC in Nigeria demonstrates that reintegration programmes cannot be understood solely as technical DDRR interventions. They are inherently political processes that enable the state to negotiate authority, legitimacy, and post-conflict order. The programme is, therefore, understood as both a political settlement mechanism and an evolving peacebuilding strategy. However, its long-term legitimacy depends on whether the initiated reforms continue to balance the reintegration of former combatants with justice, transparency, accountability, and support for victims. The introduction of the 2:1 economic empowerment ratio by the Borno Model offers a learning opportunity for scaling up OPSC’s long-term legitimacy. Overall, the future of OPSC depends not simply on the successful reintegration of former combatants, but on how the programme builds public trust by balancing security, justice, accountability, and the needs of victims and the broader society.

About The Authors

Michael I. Ugwueze is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science & Diplomacy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN).

Prof. Freedom C. Onuoha is a Professor and the Coordinator of Security, Violence and Conflict (SVC) Research Group at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.