A terrorist does not repent just by surrendering one or two guns out of the many guns at his disposal. Such gesture, though benign on the surface, may have both intended and unintended dire consequences. There will always be those who slip back to their terror frequency; who reopen their communication channels with their former allies in the terror kingdom

You have heard from the military, Nigerian military. That an ex-Boko Haram (terrorist) can become president of Nigeria in future. This message contained in an old video which suddenly started trending again after the killing of Brigadier General Musa Uba says it all. In the video, a senior military officer was seen urging terrorists to abandon their evil ways and turn to doing good and they shall be accepted.

The message was clear enough: once an ex-terrorist lays down his arms, embraces the noble path, he should be integrated into society and even into the military or para-military. In case, you don’t catch the drift, it means there is forgiveness without prosecution for an intentional killer who commits mass murder, bomb, maim and rape. For all his atrocities, the Nigerian system that we have groomed welcomes him back; all sins forgiven.

It does not matter how many people the ex-terrorist has killed; how much damage he has caused or the murderous cocktail of mayhem he has unleashed on the innocent, the blood of Nigerians he has massacred in the discharge of his fatal fantasy will atone for his sins. He gets state pardon, non-negotiable. Some have even argued in defence of this primitive prescription, citing amnesty granted militants in the Niger Delta as a precedent. Really? What a wicked comparison to fit into a predetermined mould that only gives wings to a blood-sucking agenda. It’s like trying to balance a scale with feathers and stones at opposite ends.

The National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), Office of the National Security Adviser, in January this year, released an eerie data which says that at least 5,000 repented Boko Haram fighters have been reunited with their families. The ex-terrorists underwent six months of deradicalisation and were not allowed to return to the battleground, but to their families. The NCTC said the ‘born-again’ terrorists are now using the skills they acquired in the six months deradicalisation programme in the camp, to sustain themselves within their communities. This must be one of the outcomes of the carrot and stick approach adopted by the military apparatchik to encourage young Nigerians swayed into the horror of terror to retrace their steps. But this is, on its own, problematic. It means no prosecution of such terrorists. The flip side is the danger of labelling a terrorist as ‘repented.’ A terrorist does not repent just by surrendering one or two guns out of the many guns at his disposal. Such gesture, though benign on the surface, may have both intended and unintended dire consequences. There will always be those who slip back to their terror frequency; who reopen their communication channels with their former allies in the terror kingdom; and who will not be patriotic enough to return the kind gesture of the military. Such ‘repented’ terrorists soon morph into moles in the community and may even worm their way into the security network without actually joining the military. In the type of war against terror that confronts Nigeria, victory is more likely to be achieved using non-kinetic strategies of intelligence gathering and information manipulation before deploying kinetic power of guns, airstrikes and mortar.

In the case of the gruesome murder by ISWAP of General Uba, it was obvious that moles were at work within the security system. If the communication between the gallant General and the military base now in the public domain were to be true, then it is safe to say there has been a breach of the intelligence system that ought to be impregnable. Obviously, there are moles within the security architecture who have successfully implanted themselves into the fold. This underscores the lamentation of former President, Goodluck Jonathan, who while in office and at the height of the terror siege against his government, told a stunned nation that members of the Boko Haram sect have infiltrated Aso Rock and the military.

In 2014, Jonathan, who was attending a Remembrance Day church service in Abuja, said of Boko Haram and their sympathisers: “Some of them are in the executive arm of government, some of them are in the legislative arm of government, while some of them are even in the judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies…the situation is even worse than the civil war that we fought. During the civil war, we knew and we could even predict where the enemy was coming from… But the challenge we have today is more complicated,” Jonathan said inside a packed church.

Only the blind will not see the linkage between what President Jonathan said 11 years ago and what is happening now and even what had happened in the intervening years. It’s true. The enemy is within the family. Like any household enemy, difficult to detect and almost intractable, the military must embark on discrete introspection to identify and purge itself of the moles within. How, for instance, did a textual conversation between General Uba and the Army top brass leak to the media? Does the military not have its internal communication channel/system customised only for its use especially in a period of kinetic warfare such as we have at the moment?

Truth is, all is not well within the military. Nigeria has lost soldiers and officers through ambushment and direct confrontation by a ragtag band of terrorists. To think that this same platoon of terrorists was said to have been technically defeated by the government of the late Muhammadu Buhari makes the plot sticky. It tells of only one fact: We have played politics with the state of insecurity in the country without minding the consequences of our actions. The gory killing of General Uba complete with primitive impudence and derring-do compunction of the terrorists triggers a shockwave that suggests helplessness on the part of the Nigeria military. How can a goon of poorly trained terrorists capture a leader of a brigade with thousands of soldiers under his command?

Those who play politics of semantics whether it should be called genocide, massacre, pogrom or just random killings should stop forthwith. What matters is that Nigerians are being killed: civilians, military and para-military personnel, Christians, Muslims, traditional religion protagonists and atheists. What Nigerians want is safety. They want their country safe and secure. It does not matter anymore who dislodges the terrorists. This should guide the strategy of the government. Avoid the pitfall of statistics. Just look for solution wherever you can find it and let there be peace in the land. Chikena!