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: What should be done? Authorities should improve intake procedures to filter out civilians who do not belong in the program. They should take urgent steps to ease conditions of confinement and do more to smooth program graduates’ reintegration into society while winning more public support, including by prosecuting some jihadists captured by security forces. I. Overview
Operation Safe Corridor was established by the Nigerian government in 2016 to receive voluntary defectors from factions of the jihadist group Boko Haram. Part of a national strategy to degrade militant activity in the country’s north east, the program faces problems. Authorities channel into Safe Corridor far too many civilians fleeing Boko Haram areas, unjustly mislabelling them jihadists, clogging the system and putting off donors. More troubling are accounts from program participants who have seen sometimes deadly conditions at the facilities they pass through on the way into Safe Corridor – both a concern in its own right and a deterrent for those who might follow their path. Despite improvements, the reintegration of defectors into society can be bumpy. The program is also controversial, with critics arguing that it amounts to amnesty for terrorists. For Safe Corridor to thrive, the government will need to better screen out civilians, protect participants and more effectively reintegrate graduates into society.