Reintegration, Historical Grievances and Sustainable Peace: Community Acceptance and Post-Insurgency Reconstruction in Northeastern Nigeria, 2015-2026

Nigeria’s two largest reintegration programmes for former Boko Haram associates, Operation Safe Corridor (OSC) and the Borno Model, report how many people they process but not whether the communities that receive them accept them. This paper asks what the available evidence shows about community acceptance and what follows for programme design and for accountability to communities and victims. It is a purposive, interpretive review of 17 sources published up to 7 July 2026, graded against stated criteria. Representative surveys around Maiduguri record high stated willingness to receive repentant returnees, while qualitative studies record suspicion, boycott and resentment of the support returnees receive. Acceptance is therefore conditional: it rises with perceived repentance and familiarity, follows what neighbours and leaders are thought to believe, and falls where communities feel excluded or victims ignored. Programme completion adds little. Three design weaknesses are assessed: reconciliation replaced by sensitisation and victims left outside the process, each moderately supported, and religious leaders enlisted to secure compliance, which is thinly supported. No source follows graduates over time, so recurrence of violence is treated as a risk and not as a finding. Drawing on relational thought and Islamic ethics, the paper argues for a conditional community right to be consulted and, above a protected floor of safety and due process, to decline a placement. It recommends independent monitoring, consultation before placement, an advisory role for faith institutions and visible support for victims, each set out by actor, risk and sequence.