Brigadier General Yusuf Ali says Nigeria’s deradicalisation pipeline is tightly screened, state-led at the point of release and monitored at community level, even as critics keep warning that the programme still lacks enough transparency and post-release tracking.
ABUJA, Nigeria — Brigadier General Yusuf Ali, the Coordinator of Operation Safe Corridor, has forcefully defended Nigeria’s deradicalisation programme. He insists that there is no verified evidence of rehabilitated ex-insurgents returning to terrorism.
Speaking on ARISE News on Wednesday, 1 April 2026, Ali said the claim that former fighters are returning to violent groups “does not reflect reality on the ground.” The record available to his team does not show any confirmed relapse into terror activity.
His intervention lands at a sensitive moment for Nigeria’s security architecture.
Operation Safe Corridor is the federal government’s non-kinetic programme. It was conceived in September 2015. It became operational in September 2016. The programme functions as a multi-agency peacebuilding scheme chaired by the Chief of Defence Staff. More than 17 ministries, departments, and agencies are involved.
Its stated purpose is to move willing, low-risk armed actors through disengagement, deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration.
Ali’s core message was simple. He said beneficiaries are not “insert[ed] into society” at the end of training. State governments handle reintegration. Operation Safe Corridor mainly provides the environment for communities to take them back.
He also said traditional rulers, local leaders and security agencies at the grassroots level continue to monitor the clients after release. This ensures their conduct matches the training they received.
That is the official story. But the wider debate has never been that neat.
A Centre for Democracy and Development policy brief warned years ago. It highlighted that the programme was dogged by opacity, especially around how defectors are selected and where they are sent after release.
An ICCT policy brief said Operation Safe Corridor had not always clearly distinguished between high-risk and low-risk participants. It also needed stronger post-release tracking.
Those concerns still matter because Nigeria is not dealing with a finished conflict, but an active one.
The pressure on the programme has also intensified because the country’s security picture has worsened.
Reuters reported in July 2025 that killings by insurgents and bandits in the first half of that year had already surpassed the total for all of 2024.
In November 2025, President Bola Tinubu declared a nationwide security emergency. He ordered mass recruitment into the police and military after fresh waves of armed violence across several states.
In that climate, every policy tied to insurgency management is being scrutinised harder than before.
Defenders of the programme argue that the criticism confuses rehabilitation with softness.
The Defence Headquarters recently said Operation Safe Corridor is not an amnesty scheme. It is a “carefully structured” deradicalisation, rehabilitation, and reintegration initiative. This initiative is for surrendered, screened, and low-risk former combatants.
NEMA has also been publicly supporting the programme, delivering relief materials to the rehabilitation camp in Gombe State in April 2025 as part of the wider federal DRR effort.
There is also a widening footprint that suggests the federal authorities are betting more, not less, on the model.
The official Operation Safe Corridor website now describes the programme as a peacebuilding mechanism for both Nigeria’s North-East and North-West.
PRNigeria reported in February 2026 that the Chief of Defence Staff praised the expansion of the scheme into the North-West. This expansion is part of a broader non-kinetic response to banditry, kidnapping and violent extremism.
That matters because it shows the model is no longer being treated as a narrow Boko Haram fix, but as a national security instrument.
Ali’s claim goes beyond a media rebuttal. He asserts that no beneficiary has been found fomenting trouble in Nigeria or neighbouring countries. It is a test of credibility for one of the state’s most controversial security experiments.
If the monitoring chain he described truly holds from the DDR camp to the palace of the traditional ruler, and reaches the desks of local security officers, then Operation Safe Corridor remains one of Abuja’s few surviving non-kinetic arguments. It stands against endless war.
If not, the backlash from victims, displaced communities and a fatigued public will only deepen. That is the real story underneath the slogan.
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