‘Fear And Regret’: Former Boko Haram Fighters Seek God — And A Place In Society
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Ali Shu’aibu recalled that it started with religion. As a young Islamic student in northeastern Nigeria’s Damboa district, he regularly attended sermons by Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf, whose teachings drew thousands of followers in the early 2000s.
“I believed his message and thought I was serving Islam,” he recalled.
That conviction carried him through years of violence. Shu’aibu rose through Boko Haram's ranks, coordinating operations and supervising fighters across Damboa and neighboring parts of Yobe State.
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Boko Haram is an extremist militant group active in Nigeria and some surrounding countries. Its leaders are known to warp Muslim theology into an extremist ideology in order to attract men like Shu’aibu to its ranks.
Now, a unique program aims to deradicalize former Boko Haram fighters through counseling, teaching them the Quran and showing them how to live a peaceful Muslim life. However, victims of Boko Haram are pushing back against re-integrating the former fighters into their community, saying true accountability and reconciliation are needed first.
When he was fighting for Boko Haram, Shu’aibu was separated from his wife and three children for years.
“Sometimes I did not even know whether they were alive or dead,” he said.
What broke him was not military defeat but memory.
“I was tired of running, tired of violence and tired of being away from my family,” he added.
In 2023, Shu’aibu surrendered to Nigerian troops along the Damboa-Wajiroko road and was transferred to Operation Safe Corridor's rehabilitation center in Malam Sidi. It was a quiet town in northeastern Nigeria where a different kind of reckoning takes place daily. No guns. No military commands.
Instead, counseling sessions, vocational training and Islamic scholars who sit with former fighters and open the Quran to passages they say were never shown to them.
“The scholars showed us verses we had misunderstood,” Shu’aibu said. “They explained that Islam does not permit the killing of innocent people.”
This is the theological core of Nigeria's de-radicalization program — the argument that the violence was not an expression of Islam but a distortion of it, and that returning to authentic religious practice is itself the path out.
Sheikh Muhammad Kabir Musa, an Islamic educator working with rehabilitation programs in northeastern Nigeria, said the process is neither quick nor simple.
“Extremist groups often manipulate religious texts outside their proper context,” he explained. “Correcting those misconceptions requires qualified Islamic scholarship, continuous learning, sincere self-examination and spiritual guidance. It is not a change that usually happens overnight.”
A generation shaped by manipulation
Ibrahim Mohammed,35, spent years fighting under ISWAP in Borno State. Like many others inside the program, he describes how extremist leaders weaponized Islamic teaching to justify violence.
“They constantly told us our actions would earn rewards from Allah,” he said.
Attacks were sometimes deliberately planned for Mondays and Thursdays because commanders claimed those days carried special spiritual significance.
“We accepted everything without questioning it,” he said.
Today, he struggles to speak about what he did.
“Some memories never leave me,” he said after a long pause. “I regret my actions every day.”
Camp psychologists say these admissions are not incidental — they are the point. Rather than encouraging participants to minimize or deny their past, the program requires them to confront it directly. Dr. Bashir Adamu, a psychologist at the University of Maiduguri, says genuine change is possible but not guaranteed.
"Human beings are capable of change,” he told Religion Unplugged.
For Shu’aibu, the Islamic re-education sessions were the turning point.
“I cannot erase my past,” he said. “But I can choose a different future.”
The harder question
The program's record is deeply contested, and the criticism goes beyond administrative shortcomings to something more fundamental: the experience of victims who watch their perpetrators receive support while their own losses go unaddressed.
A peer-reviewed study published in February 2026 in the journal African Identities, drawing on direct interviews with victims, found that many perceive the amnesty process as unjust.
While repentant Boko Haram members receive rehabilitation support, vocational training and reintegration assistance, victims feel their own pain and losses are ignored, creating a moral inversion that undermines the program's stated goal of post-conflict reconciliation.
A detailed analysis published by the Center for Democracy and Development identified the program as “inherently perpetrator-focused” — offering a corridor for former fighters while operating “in ways that are almost entirely centered on the offender.”
Communities most affected by Boko Haram’s violence, who lived through abductions, forced marriages, sexual violence and the killing of religious and community leaders, are expected to receive graduates of a six-to-12-month rehabilitation program without any formalized reconciliation process.
In several instances across Borno State, residents have openly opposed the reintegration of former insurgents, citing unresolved trauma, fear of recidivism and the absence of visible prosecution for those implicated in serious crimes. Critics argue that this lack of accountability could incentivize impunity.
On June 13, Democracy Day, the Borno State Government reintegrated another batch of 720 repentant insurgents alongside 992 spouses and 2,050 children, bringing the total number reintegrated to 9,680. Many Nigerians condemned the ceremony, arguing that it prioritized perpetrators over victims and undermined the sacrifices of soldiers and survivors.
The most troubling dimension for survivors is not the program's existence but its design: there is no formal mechanism for victims to confront those who harmed them, no structured process for perpetrators to acknowledge specific crimes to specific people, and no pathway for communities to determine collectively whether someone has earned the right to return.
Sheikh Musa acknowledged the tension.
“Islam encourages forgiveness where appropriate, but it also upholds justice,” he said. “Repentance before God does not automatically remove legal responsibility or the rights of victims. Serious crimes must be addressed through lawful processes.”
Asked what genuine repentance actually looks like, Musa said: “Islam does not ask us to judge people's hearts. It asks us to judge their actions. Genuine repentance is demonstrated through consistent good character, respect for human life, rejection of extremist ideology and patience over time. Trust should be earned gradually.”
Adamu agreed.
“Successful reintegration requires evidence of lasting behavioural change,” he said. “Communities need reassurance through transparent assessment, supervision, and continued psychosocial support. … International principles of trauma-informed care suggest that survivors should feel safe and protected. Decisions about assigning former fighters to sensitive responsibilities should involve careful risk assessment, professional oversight, and consideration of victims’ wellbeing.”
What transformation looks like
Security analysts argue that military victories alone cannot eliminate violent extremism in northeastern Nigeria. Without addressing the poverty, unemployment, weak education and ideological manipulation that make young people vulnerable to recruitment, extremist groups will continue finding new members.
That analysis is what gives the Malam Sidi program its significance, and its burden. It is an attempt to break a cycle that has run through the same communities for fifteen years. Whether it can do that without also addressing what those communities lost, and who they lost it to, remains the question the program has not yet answered.
As the afternoon call to prayer echoes across the rehabilitation center, participants leave classrooms and workshops and walk quietly toward the mosque. Shu’aibu pauses before joining them. He has a message, he says, for fighters still in the forests of northeastern Nigeria.
“There is nothing good in the bush,” he said. “You may think you are fighting for a purpose, but eventually you realize you are destroying your own future and the future of others.”
He paused.
“If you are still there, come out,” Shu’aibu added. “Lay down your weapons. Life outside is not easy, but it is far better than living every day with fear, guilt and regret.”
This story was reported and produced in collaboration with Egab.
Adamu Aliyu Ngulde is a freelance journalist based in Nigeria. He is widely recognized for his on-the-ground reporting, news coverage and as a fixer covering the Lake Chad region.