The first set of 95 surrendered Boko Haram fighters who have completed a component of De-radicalisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DRR) programme will soon be reunited with their families.

Speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting to work out modalities for the reintegration of rehabilitated ex-Boko Haram fighters, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Abayomi Olonisakin said the former fighters, who were admitted into a DRR camp in Gombe State, had successfully gone through a 16-week programme.

He said: “The ex-fighters have been transformed, made to imbibe good characters and habits, and have also learnt vocational trades to empower them.

“The next stage of the programme, reintegration is the most important and complex aspect of the DRR programme. It requires painstaking planning and careful execution. Hence, the need for our gathering to work out modalities for the smooth transfer of the ex-fighters to their respective state authorities and eventually to their relations.”

Olonisakin said that the programme is part of Operation Safe Corridor established to create opportunity for willing, surrendered and repentant Boko Haram fighters undergo de-radicalisation process.

He said that “the programme is to facilitate their return to normal life. Consequently, a committee comprising governors of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States and service chiefs, among other security agencies was set up under my chairmanship to midwife the programme.”

PRNigeria gathered that 375 officials from the armed forces and 12 other ministries, departments and agencies are pooled under a unified command and control to execute the DRR programme. Some of the agencies included the Police, Department of State Services, the Prison Service, National Emergency Management Agency, Victim Support Fund and Nigerian Immigration Service.

Other members of the committee included Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Presidential Committee on North-East Initiative and National Orientation Agency.

•Sourced from PRNigeria

Update news