Title: Nigeria: Ending Unrest in the Niger Delta | Crisis Group
Headings: Nigeria: Ending Unrest in the Niger Delta
Nigeria: Ending Unrest in the Niger Delta
An Exit from Boko Haram? Assessing Nigeria’s Operation Safe Corridor
I. Overview
II. Creating an Exit from Jihad
III. Missing the Target
IV. A Brutal and Tortuous Path
V. Reintegration: Out of the Corridor
VI. Repairing the Corridor
VII. Conclusion
Dakar/Maiduguri/Brussels, 19 March 2021
Appendix A: Map of Nigeria

Content: To strengthen the program, the authorities, with donor support, should: Fix screening systems so that they more effectively identify Boko Haram recruits who are in the program’s target group. Civilians who have escaped from Boko Haram areas, who are more likely than former recruits to find immediate acceptance back home or in displacement camps, should be screened out quickly and moved through separately so they can make a speedy return to society. Accelerate work to improve detention conditions, adding better safeguards to protect internees from abuse after surrendering and creating better systems to move defectors swiftly out of interim detention centres and into the Mallam Sidi camp. The camp leadership at Mallam Sidi should tighten up management of food supplies so that internees are well nourished and secure more resources for the training and psycho-social support key to internees’ return to society. Augment efforts to coordinate the return of Safe Corridor graduates with state authorities and local security services to help smooth their arrival back into society. Working with donors, they should also intensify plans to offer material support to host communities and their members, in order to give them incentives to accept former Boko Haram recruits into their fold. Beef up public awareness campaigns to persuade Nigerians of Safe Corridor's merits and to overcome any hostility to the idea of rehabilitating former Boko Haram recruits. In doing so, the government should strive to balance the assistance it is giving to former jihadists to start new lives with initiatives that can afford comfort and a measure of justice to victims of Boko Haram atrocities, notably putting on trial captured militants such as high-level commanders or those involved in atrocities. Crisis Group’s Consulting Senior Analyst for West Africa Vincent Foucher conducts field research in Maiduguri, north-eastern Nigeria.