Numbers have a particular honesty that narrative sometimes cannot match. When 744 individuals graduated from the De-radicalisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration Camp in Mallam Sidi, Gombe State last Thursday, the demographic breakdown released at the ceremony offered one of the clearest maps yet of the insurgency's human geography who it captures, from where, and in what proportions.
Borno State, the epicentre of Nigeria's Boko Haram and ISWAP crisis, contributed by far the largest share of graduates. Of the 744 clients in the current batch, 597 approximately 80 percent hailed from Borno, a figure that reflects both the state's ground-zero status in the insurgency and the disproportionate exposure of its population to forced recruitment, displacement and ideological manipulation. Yobe State, another North-East frontline, was second with 58 graduates.
What is striking, however, is how far beyond the North-East the programme has had to reach. The graduating cohort included participants from Adamawa, Bauchi, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto and Anambra states. A spread across five geopolitical zones that shatters any comfortable notion that violent extremism is a geographically contained problem. Even Abia, Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi and Enugu states in Nigeria's South-East had representation.
The cross-border dimension is equally significant. Among the 744 graduates were eight foreign nationals, one from Burkina Faso, one from Cameroon, two from Chad, and four from Niger Republic. Their presence is not incidental. It underscores the transnational character of the Lake Chad Basin insurgency, where porous borders, shared ethnic communities and interconnected militant networks have long made the crisis a regional rather than purely Nigerian problem.
On the question of faith, the breakdown is telling: 733 of the 744 graduates are Muslims, and 11 are Christians. The religious composition of the cohort informed how the programme designed its therapeutic interventions, psycho-spiritual counsellors worked separately with Christian and Muslim participants, using scripture and doctrine to counter the distorted religious justifications that extremist groups deploy to recruit and retain members. The coexistence of both faiths within the camp became, according to the graduating cohort's spokesman Basil Anetochukwu, one of the programme's unexpected gifts.
Among the three sub-batches, Special Batch 7/2024 was the largest at 396 clients, followed by Special Batch 8/2025 with 200, and Sulhu Batch 8/2025 with 31. Their varied entry routes into the programme reflect the different pathways through which individuals disengage from armed groups, some surrendering voluntarily, others intercepted in military operations, and others referred through community-level processes.