The Ministry of Defense revealed that 800 former Boko Haram fighters surrendered to the military are currently in power to continue reintegrating.
Defence Training and Operations President Emeka Onumajuru disclosed in a channel TV morning excerpt on Monday, February 10, 2025 that he said a year is enough to redirect and reintegrate former terrorists into the larger society.
He noted that while 129,000 Boko Haram fighters and their families have surrendered so far, only one selected group has been selected for recovery.
Onumajuru explained that all surrenders were under legal scrutiny, those convicted were faced with prosecution, while others who were deemed suitable for recovery were placed in a Deradicalization program marked as the “Safe Corridor” operation.
“To get the numbers right, (we have about 129,000 people surrendered to the members of the BH (Boko Haram) and their families,” he said.
“We are a professional army, and when you participate in battles and your opponent surrenders, you take him away and let the legal process take a natural process.
“Currently, some of them are detention centers, some of them are in Kainji, and there is a special court that passes everyone. Those who are found culprits face the books, and those books that are going to go through the whole process, This takes about a year.
“The income figure is not huge. As I said, we have 129,000 BH members and families. That doesn’t mean that 129,000 are passing the program.
“The batch of people currently passing the program is about 800. These 800 people are people who have been screened throughout the legal process before bringing them to the center.”
