Borno: Traditional rulers beg communities to accept repentant terrorists

Traditional rulers in Borno State are appealing to their subjects to accept repentant insurgents in their communities.

The acceptance of the now over 160,000 repentant Boko Haram insurgents has constituted the most-towering challenge bedeviling the Borno State government’s integration programme for the insurgents in their home communities since the commencement of the scheme about three years ago.

Majority of the communities and individuals, whose loved ones were killed and maimed by the insurgents, have remained apprehensive to the programme, maintaining that they would not live with the ex-insurgents in the same communities.

Newspot could recall that over the last couple of years, fear of offended communities and individuals exerting vengeance on them has been forcing the repentant insurgents to renege on their repentance and troop back to the bushes to resume terror.

“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.

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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.