Thread by @HumAngle_

The Deradicalised (1): One Man’s Journey From Almajiri To Jihadist And Then IDP

[THREAD]

Bye, Boko Haram

“We started hearing about the Safe Corridor programme over the radio and they also threw flyers in the bush, which contained messages about it in English, Kanuri, Arabic, and Hausa,” narrates Usman.

Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters had launched Operation Safe Corridor (OSC), a multisectoral programme, in 2015 and kickstarted it a year later. Its aim was to “rehabilitate repentant Boko Haram militants and reintegrate them back into their respective communities as ..

productive law-abiding citizens”.

Despite widespread criticism from those who consider the programme premature or a misplacement of priorities, it has since gone on to graduate about 2,000 former Boko Haram members.

Usman had started regretting leaving the city for Boko Haram’s Daulat especially as his economic fortunes took a downturn. The routes outside the group’s territory were not easily accessible and, in his words, “things by then were not moving well”.

But it was not just the lack of money and space to move freely that bothered him. He also found the wanton carnage upsetting. “If they found you selling things, they would slaughter you. And when we went to war, we killed everybody except children. We began to tell ourselves ..

that Allah would not forgive us if we ended up like this,” he says.

At first, he left Sambisa for Minimawo, a community in Cameroon. Then he discussed his plan to desert with each of his three wives. Two were glad to escape with him.

The third called him crazy and said she would rather go to Nigeria as a suicide bomber. Fearing she might snitch, he lied that he was only testing her faith. He later sneaked out with the other two wives and together they travelled to Bankiㅡsometime in 2018.

Hello, Safe Corridor

Usman had barely been in Banki for a week when an operative of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) accused him of being a member of Boko Haram and reported him to the military.

When the soldiers questioned him, he replied that he surrendered voluntarily and claimed he was only a Qur’an school teacher to the women back in Sambisa.

Special report, read here:

humangle.ng/the-deradicali…