Borno NUJ advises government on workable timeline for reintegrating surrendered terrorists

Borno NUJ advises government on workable timeline for reintegrating surrendered terrorists

The Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ Borno State Council has called on the Federal and state governments to draw a workable timeline that will be acceptable to the people in its plan to reintegrate surrendered Boko Haram fighters across communities in North-east Nigeria. 

The union also observed that it would be in the interest of all citizens for the military to interrogate the surrendered fighters to provide information on how to recover weapons they had used in fighting the government.

The Borno State NUJ stated this during the interactive session stakeholders security Operatives held in Maiduguri, the state capital.

NUJ also said an adequate reconciliation process should be initiated at the community level involving traditional, religious and opinion leaders as well as government officials before the reintegration of surrendered fighters.

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A memorandum jointly signed by the NUJ State Chairman, Comrade Bulama Talba and State Secretary, Comrade Ibrahim Mohammed, further, said there was the need for the federal government to overhaul the de-radicalisation process to focus on the ideological and reorientation, adding that there is the need also to extend the deradicalization  programme to one year to adequately monitor them.

The submission also stated that all the surrendered Boko Haram fighters should be accepted in good faith in line with religious injunctions to forgive war adversaries as stipulated in the Holy Quran without option of refusal as commanded to the Holy Prophet of Islam Muhammad peace and blessings of Allah be upon him

“They should be allowed to choose where to live and work or coexist such as their former neighbourhoods where everybody knows everybody’s dealings everyday and make it a law to punish anyone that harms those that have surrendered”.

“The children of the former fighters must be enrolled in public schools as a condition to show true surrender to the tenets of civil society and cut the chain of saying western education is forbidden”.

“A regular meeting of key stakeholders on review of the reintegration process should be adopted alongside constant mobilisation of the citizenry should be applied for mobilisation of the citizenry in every step of implementation of the reintegration process in collaboration with the press to make it a people oriented programme”. The Union observed.