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: 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: Boko Haram (generally translated from Hausa as “Western education is forbidden”) is a derisive designation used by Salafi critics of the jihadist organisation operating in north-eastern Nigeria and along the borders with Niger, Cameroon and Chad. In 2016, this group split into two factions, JAS and ISWAP. This briefing uses the familiar term Boko Haram to refer both to the group before the 2016 split and to the ISWAP and JAS factions collectively since then. For background on Boko Haram, see Crisis Group Africa Reports N°213, Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency, 3 April 2014;