Even if the country has the right to pursue mercy, it should not be carelessly done, contends
K. BOLANLE ATI-JOHN
Modern states are often judged not merely by how they defeat enemies, but by how they treat former enemies after conflict. This is one of the moral tests of civilization. Societies that cannot imagine redemption eventually become consumed by perpetual vengeance. Yet societies that abandon prudence in pursuit of reconciliation can commit an equally dangerous error. They can weaken the very institutions responsible for preserving order, sovereignty and public trust.
This tension lies at the heart of one of the most sensitive national security questions confronting states battling insurgency and terrorism: what should be done with repentant insurgents?
Rehabilitation is understandable. Deradicalization may even be strategically necessary. Reintegration into civilian society can, under carefully managed conditions, serve both humanitarian and security objectives. But the proposition becomes profoundly different when the discussion moves from society into the armed institutions of the state itself.
The armed forces are not merely another public institution. They are the coercive spine of the republic. They are built upon trust, discipline, loyalty, secrecy, unit cohesion and command confidence. A military formation functions effectively only because soldiers believe the person standing beside them is fully committed to the mission, the flag and the chain of command. Once that confidence is weakened, the institution begins to suffer silent corrosion long before visible breakdown occurs.
This is why the mere contemplation of integrating former insurgents into armed or security-sensitive institutions raises grave national security questions, even if such integration is never formally implemented.
The issue is not whether people can repent. Human beings can change. History is full of individuals who abandoned violent causes and rebuilt their lives honorably. The issue is whether repentance automatically eliminates strategic risk. It does not.
Repentance is a moral category. Security clearance is a national security category. Confusing the two is dangerous statecraft.
The central problem is the insider-threat dilemma. Modern security doctrine treats insiders as among the most dangerous threats precisely because they possess trusted access. External enemies must struggle to penetrate defenses. Insiders already exist within them. They understand routines, vulnerabilities, operational culture, command patterns and institutional psychology. In military environments, this danger becomes even more acute because access may involve weapons systems, deployment information, operational planning, intelligence procedures and force protection measures.
States fighting active insurgencies cannot afford strategic naivety about insider threats.
Nigeria’s challenge is especially delicate because the country is not dealing with a concluded historical conflict. Boko Haram and ISWAP remain active operational threats. Military bases continue to be attacked. Soldiers continue to die. Communities continue to experience displacement, fear and trauma. In such an environment, the psychological distance between combatant and victim remains dangerously narrow.
This is what makes the discussion fundamentally different from post-conflict integration arrangements seen elsewhere.
In some countries emerging from civil war, former combatants were integrated into reconstituted national security structures as part of negotiated peace settlements. But these arrangements usually emerged under highly specific conditions: formal ceasefires, internationally supervised disarmament frameworks, political settlements between organized factions and extensive institutional restructuring. Even then, such integrations often produced enduring tensions, factionalism and distrust within the security apparatus.
Nigeria’s situation is not analogous to a fully settled postwar transition. The insurgency environment remains fluid. This changes the risk calculus entirely.
The state therefore faces a difficult but unavoidable puzzle: how does it pursue rehabilitation without compromising institutional integrity?
The answer begins by recognizing that not all forms of reintegration carry equal levels of national security risk.
Civilian reintegration, under structured monitoring and deradicalization programs, belongs to one category. Integration into armed institutions belongs to another entirely. The first seeks social stabilization. The second affects the integrity of the state’s coercive infrastructure itself.
This distinction is crucial because prolonged insecurity can gradually produce institutional desensitization. States exhausted by endless conflict sometimes begin lowering psychological and operational red lines in pursuit of short-term stabilization. Under pressure, abnormal propositions slowly begin to appear reasonable. Over time, societies can become so accustomed to crisis management that they stop recognizing the deeper strategic implications of certain decisions.
This is where sober national security analysis becomes essential.
One of the least discussed consequences of poorly designed reintegration policies is their effect on military morale. Armies are not abstract organizations. They are emotional institutions built around sacrifice, memory and shared danger. Soldiers remember fallen colleagues. They remember ambushes, funerals and battlefield trauma. They remember communities destroyed by insurgency. If troops begin to perceive that the state is rewarding or elevating those once associated with the same forces responsible for those losses, the psychological consequences can be severe.
Morale does not collapse overnight. It erodes gradually through silent resentment, declining trust and weakening institutional attachment.
This is especially dangerous in countries already struggling with recruitment pressures, operational fatigue and public confidence challenges. A military fighting a long insurgency requires cohesion more than ever. Policies perceived as morally confusing can unintentionally damage that cohesion.
There is also the broader legitimacy question.
Counterinsurgency is not fought only on battlefields. It is also fought in the realm of public trust. Citizens must believe the state retains moral clarity about violence, loyalty and justice. Victims and affected communities must feel that their suffering is acknowledged rather than strategically bypassed in pursuit of administrative convenience.
Rehabilitation without visible accountability can produce perceptions of moral inversion. Communities may begin asking whether violence ultimately becomes a pathway to negotiation, rehabilitation or state accommodation. Once that perception takes hold, strategic signaling becomes dangerously distorted.
This does not mean states should reject rehabilitation altogether. That would also be unwise.
Modern insurgencies cannot be solved purely through kinetic operations. Some level of deradicalization, disengagement and reintegration will often remain necessary components of long-term stabilization. The challenge is ensuring that humanitarian impulses do not override institutional prudence.
A serious state must therefore construct firm boundaries.
Former insurgents may under carefully structured conditions be considered for monitored civilian reintegration after screening, deradicalization, community reconciliation and long-term observation. But armed institutions should remain protected spaces governed by far stricter standards because they carry unique national security implications.
The burden of proof for trusted access to coercive institutions must be extraordinarily high.
This is not vindictiveness. It is strategic realism.
Indeed, one of the enduring lessons of statecraft is that nations often survive not merely through compassion, but through disciplined distinction. Healthy states distinguish between forgiveness and access, between reconciliation and trust, between rehabilitation and institutional incorporation.
When those distinctions collapse, strategic confusion follows.
The danger is not only operational. It is psychological. Once societies begin normalizing the blurring of lines between defender and former aggressor, institutional confidence itself can begin to weaken. Citizens may start questioning whether the state still possesses coherent boundaries regarding loyalty, legitimacy and national protection.
That uncertainty can become a vulnerability in its own right.
Ultimately, the debate is larger than one policy question. It speaks to the philosophy of state survival itself.
Every serious state must answer a fundamental question during periods of prolonged insecurity: what institutions must remain psychologically and operationally protected at all costs?
For most nations, the armed forces belong within that category.
This is why the issue must be approached not emotionally, but strategically. The discussion should not descend into slogans, outrage or simplistic moral binaries. It should instead be examined through the hard disciplines of counterintelligence, force protection, institutional psychology, insider-threat doctrine and long-term state resilience.
A republic has the right to pursue mercy. It may even have a strategic interest in doing so. But mercy must never become indistinguishable from strategic carelessness.
Because repentance may reduce moral hostility. It may even permit social reintegration.
But repentance alone is not security clearance.
Rear Admiral Ati-John Rtd is a Distinguished Fellow of the National Defence College, Abuja and writes from Lagos
