Deradicalisation and national security

Abstract

There is no gainsaying that the Northeast of Nigeria is extensively riddled by extreme views and violence, oiled by poverty, literacy disconnect, unregulated radical clerics, ungoverned spaces, widening literacy gap, and unemployment confronting the population and these further aggravate the vulnerability of Nigeria’s national security. It was against this background that this study adopted the reintegrative shaming theory to investigate the nexus between deradicalisation and national security. This study decomposed national security into terrorism and proliferation of small arms and light weapons, using the lens of deradicalisation process under Operation Safe Corridor and Sulhu. This study employed exploratory research design with reliance on publicly available archive documents. The study relies solely on secondary data. The research is conducted by examining literature concerning deradicalisation, terrorism and small and light weapon proliferation. The literature was obtained through searches in publicly available material. Literature from non-serial publications, official reports, and conferences has been included particularly if they have been cited by other references in connection with national security. Findings from the study showed that deradicalisation positively influence counterterrorism campaign by the military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies.Result from study also showed that deradicalisation influence onproliferation of small arms and light weapon remained largely unsettled. The study recommends that government should create holistic buy-ins into the operation safe corridor, whichshould be broadened and not siloed as presently seen in Nigeria by the military, which has a low buy in point, for local community involvement. The study also recommends the Nigeria Security architecture should encourage decentralization of commands and control closer to the people by unbundling security from exclusive list into the concurrent list, so as to properly situate security closer to the people and not the elite alone.