A bunch of hoodlums Maiduguri residents and police authorities identified as repentant Boko Haram members lost their chills Tuesday night.
Reports say police efforts at the Ibrahim Taiwo Division couldn’t contain the attackers in military uniforms, wielding machetes.
Their mission: to free some of their colleagues whom police had earlier nabbed for doing drugs at a pill pad in town. And they succeeded in breaking out some of them
But the state police public relations officer said the officers on duty held the marauders until the men of Operation Crack arrived.
“Thereafter, they went and attacked the Nigeria Immigration Service and the NDLEA checkpoints after the township gate,” Kenneth Daso told the Daily Trust.
Residents say the now-unrepentant terrorists also attacked shop owners and pedestrians.
Daso said investigation is now on to ascertain the identity of the attackers.
Former terrorists surrendering to the military in kinetic operations or the soft type have become subjects of suspicion.
Many believe their repentance lacks substance, and offers them an easy way out to dodge consequences of their criminality.
Disarming, de-radicalizing and demobilizing extremists that surrender is a standard practice in war, asymmetrical or not.
But the model Nigerian adopts in its counterterrorism operation, especially at the re-integration stage, has yet to work.
The state government, in responding to the Tuesday attack, said it hasn’t got any briefing. Gov. Babagana Zulum himself may not doubt the possibility, though.
“The concept of de-radicalization or Safe Corridor is not working as expected,” he told te North-East Governors Forum in 2021.
Those who have passed through the corridor initiative usually go back, and re-join the terror group after carefully studying the security arrangements in their communities.
About 100,000 fighters and members of the Boko Hrama community have surrendered so far, according to the military.
Borno’s Women Affairs Commissioner Zuwaira Gambo said only about 5000 of them were former mujahedeen. Most of others are farmers, victims, women, children, and others that terrorists brought into captivity for years.
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