Counterterrorism is Not Politics: Defending Nigeria’s Non-Kinetic Approach
By Chidi Omeje
In a press statement issued by its spokesman, Bolaji Abdullahi, on Sunday, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) raised concerns about “reintegrating the so-called repentant terrorists into the society”. The statement sounded forceful on the surface, but they rest on a selective reading of both the nature of modern insurgency and the structure of Nigeria’s response. What is most worrying in the party’s statement is not its critique, but its tendency to frame a complex national security tool as evidence of “weakness,” thereby risking the politicisation of a sensitive and highly technical security intervention.
To begin with, the De-radicalisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DRR) programme under Operation Safe Corridor is not an improvised or uniquely Nigerian experiment. It is a globally recognised component of counterinsurgency strategy. Countries that have faced protracted ideological or insurgent violence, from Colombia’s demobilisation of FARC fighters, to Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation programmes for extremist detainees, to aspects of post-conflict reconciliation in places like Northern Ireland, have all, at different times, adopted structured reintegration frameworks alongside kinetic operations. The logic is straightforward: insurgencies are sustained not just by weapons, but by ideology, grievance, coercion, and social networks. Military force can degrade capacity, but it rarely extinguishes belief systems or recruitment pipelines on its own.
Against that backdrop, portraying reintegration as “appeasement” misunderstands the layered nature of the threat. Terrorism, particularly of the kind Nigeria has faced in the North-East, is not merely a criminal enterprise; it is also an ideological ecosystem. As such, it cannot be defeated solely through battlefield victories. Non-kinetic approaches like DRR are not substitutes for justice or military action; they are complements designed to reduce recidivism, weaken recruitment, encourage defections, and gather intelligence.
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The ADC’s argument also glosses over a critical operational detail: Operation Safe Corridor is not a blanket amnesty programme. It is a structured, multi-stakeholder process involving the military, intelligence services, psychologists, religious scholars, and international partners. Participants are subjected to screening and profiling. Those credibly linked to grave violent crimes are not admitted into the programme but are instead channelled through the appropriate judicial or military processes. The facility is specifically designed for low-risk individuals, often conscripts, abductees, or those who surrendered voluntarily, whose continued detention without a pathway to disengagement could, in fact, create future security risks.
It is therefore misleading to suggest that reintegration occurs “without accountability” or “without safeguards.” Accountability exists on a spectrum in counterinsurgency environments. Not every individual associated with an insurgent group occupies the same level of culpability. A rigid, one-size-fits-all punitive approach may satisfy public anger, but it can also prolong conflict by discouraging defections and hardening extremist narratives.
Equally important is the claim that government rhetoric, such as describing insurgents as “brothers” or “prodigal sons”, signals softness. In conflict resolution practice, language is often deliberately calibrated to encourage disengagement and reduce psychological barriers to surrender. This is not an endorsement of crimes committed; it is a tactical communication tool aimed at breaking cycles of violence. Conflating such language with policy weakness oversimplifies a nuanced strategy.
The ADC is right to insist that victims’ rights, justice, and community safety must remain central. Those are legitimate and necessary pillars of any credible security framework. However, to dismiss reintegration outright is to ignore decades of global evidence showing that purely militarised responses rarely achieve lasting peace in ideologically driven conflicts.
More broadly, there is a danger in converting every element of national security policy into a partisan contest. Counterterrorism requires continuity, institutional memory, and a degree of consensus that transcends political cycles. When opposition parties reduce complex programmes to talking points, they risk undermining public confidence in initiatives that depend heavily on trust, community cooperation, and international support.
The real question, therefore, is not whether Nigeria should deploy non-kinetic tools like Operation Safe Corridor, but how to continuously strengthen transparency, community engagement, and post-reintegration monitoring within the programme. Constructive criticism in that direction would advance national security. Blanket condemnation, on the other hand, risks reinforcing the very cycles of mistrust and polarisation that extremist groups exploit.
In the final analysis, confronting terrorism demands both firmness and sophistication. Strength is not measured solely by the force deployed against enemies, but also by the intelligence and foresight applied in ensuring that fewer enemies exist tomorrow than today.
*Chidi Omeje is the publisher of Security Digest (www.securitydigestng.com)
