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: 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. CRISISGROUP/ Jorge Gutierrez Lucena
II. Creating an Exit from Jihad
Operation Safe Corridor is the result of several years of discussions within the Nigerian government about how to encourage voluntary defections from Boko Haram. As early as 2013, four years into the insurgency, the authorities started to recognise that a military response alone would be insufficient to dismantle the group. [fn] Crisis Group interview, senior Nigerian security official, Abuja, 6 December 2019 (concerning authorities’ realisation of the usefulness of defections). With respect to the terminology used in this briefing: