Femi Akintunde-Johnson
In February 2020, long before “banditry” became a national synonym for grief, I wrote a warning in this same space: “Let’s tread with sense and sobriety; we should not further complicate a complex man-made problem.” It was in response to the now forgotten absurdity of a proposed National Agency for “Education, Rehabilitation, De-radicalisation and Integration of Repentant Insurgents.” The bill was sponsored by a senator representing Yobe East Senatorial District and former governor of Yobe State, Ibrahim Geidam. It sought to establish an agency designed, not for victims of terror, but for the terrorists themselves – complete with schooling, psycho-massage and possible reinsertion into communities still nursing their wounds. At the time, it seemed like another tragicomic episode from the theatre of Abuja. Today, with Nigeria besieged on multiple fronts, it sounds less like satire and more like prophecy ignored.
I had quoted experts then – Andrew Silke of the University of East London, Patrick Dunleavy chronicling Britain’s failed attempt with Usman Khan, the London Bridge attacker who gamed the system and walked out of prison more radical than he walked in. I warned that deradicalisation without a watertight framework was a “dangerous gamble” – the sort of gamble we Nigerians tend to lose spectacularly. Yet our lawmakers flirted with it, seduced by shiny PowerPoints from foreign consultants, and by the delusion that radicalisation is something you can sprinkle with counselling and release like a domesticated parrot.