Borno welcome home 25 ex-Boko Haram members for rehabilitation

SADIQ ABUBAKAR, Maiduguri 

The Borno State Government has received for rehabilitation 25 repentant Boko Haram members, who had earlier surrendered to the Nigerian Army in the Niger Republic.

The ex-Boko Haram members were on Wednesday evening received with their wives at the Maiduguri airport in a Nigerian Army jet in the company of soldiers led by  the Commander, Safe Corridor, Brigadier General Bamidele Mutiu Shafa, who coordinates the Federal Government’s  established Safe Corridor initiative.

Speaking, the safe corridor commandant said, “We have just delivered 25 persons, comprising men, women, and children.

“The ex-Boko Haram members laid down arms and surrendered to the Nigerien government, who contacted the Nigerian government to take them home.

“So we have brought them home safely and handed them to the Borno State government for onward rehabilitation as part of the Operation Safe Corridor de-radicalization programme.

“We are using this opportunity to encourage those that are still in the bush come out because the president of the Federal Republic has given them an open arm to drop their weapons and embrace peace”, Shafa said.

The repentant Boko Haram members were on behalf of the Governor handed over to the Borno State Commissioner of Women Affairs, and Social Development, Hajiya Zuwaira Gambo, at the Bulumkutu Rehabilitation Center establsihed for the deradicalization, rehabiliation, reintegration and vocational training programmes of insurgents.

The commissioner assured that the “state government will provide them with psychosocial support, feed them, clothe them, and give some form of education and skills acquisition among other things within three months or so before reintegrating them with their loved ones to continue with their normal life.”