Traditional leaders in Borno State are urging their communities to embrace repentant insurgents.
The integration of over 160,000 former Boko Haram members poses a significant challenge for the Borno State government’s rehabilitation program. Many communities, still traumatized by the violence inflicted by the insurgents, are hesitant to accept them back.
Over the years, fear of retaliation from affected communities has led some repentant insurgents to return to their former ways, abandoning their rehabilitation efforts.
“We now beg people to please accept the repentant insurgents as their peace-loving kinsmen to enable us as communities, and as a state, to break the cycle of violence that has troubled our state for about 13 years now,” a traditional ruler, Alhaji Abba Kyari Terab, disclosed in Maiduguri on Monday, April 8.
Terab, who is a District Head in Jere Local Government Area of the state, spoke as the representative of traditional rulers at the end of an event organized by a Maiduguri-based NGO, Allamin Foundation for Peace and Development.
“Community acceptance of the repentant insurgents is key to their full integration in their home communities,” he maintained, adding, “That is why, to achieve this, we resorted to mounting enlightenment campaigns to plead with our communities to accept the repentant insurgents as their kinsmen.”
Terab added, “We have discussed extensively with our religious leaders and community leaders and also pleaded with them to please accept the repentant insurgents to facilitate breaking the circle of violence.”
He observed that so long as communities in the state do not give the repentant insurgents the opportunity to get fully integrated among them, the Boko Haram violence would continue.
“Through our interactions with most of them, they told us that they regretted joining Boko Haram and that most of those still in the bush are willing to come back home but for the fear of rejection by the society and vengeance by offended communities,” Terab said.
The event organized by Allamin Foundation, titled, ‘Strengthening Capacities and Will for Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in Borno State’, was sponsored by UKaid.
