Managing Armed Group Defections 2025 Policy Brief

The Borno Model represents a shift from militarized, coercive approaches to a more humane, locally-owned framework for managing defections from Boko Haram factions. While it has successfully processed 160,000 exits by March 2024 through inclusive family-based reception and community engagement, it faces critical challenges including severe under-funding of livelihood support, a lack of transparent operational guidelines, and design flaws that risk reuniting women with their former captors.

• The Borno Model's shift toward a more humane, non-kinetic approach has increased defection rates by lowering barriers for combatants and low-risk associates, specifically by avoiding abusive facilities like the Joint Investigation Centre.
• Locally-owned and community-centered reintegration, including twice-weekly trust-building interactions and partnerships with traditional and religious leaders, improves the social negotiation of acceptance and allows the model to adapt quickly to feedback.
• Severe under-resourcing of livelihood programs and insufficient start-up capital (such as the 100,000 Naira release sum) increase the risk of recidivism and have led to a reduction in new defections as government promises remain unfulfilled.
• The absence of clear, transparent operational guidelines has led to procedural inconsistencies, where some combatants evade deradicalization by claiming to be 'farmers' and high-profile commanders receive preferential financial treatment.
• While the model provides gender-specific services through a UNICEF-built Women and Children Centre, a fundamental design flaw in the 'family reunification' policy has resulted in women being forced back to their former captors.
• Current post-release monitoring is limited to isolated case studies; the document argues that systematic tracking of employment and re-radicalization patterns is necessary to create a data-driven policy framework.

APA

Adebayo, T., & Watson, A. (2025). Managing Armed Group Defections 2025 Policy Brief. Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/pages/1759235831584-Adhoc-pub-armed-group.pdf

Chicago

Adebayo, Taiwo, and Abi Watson. Managing Armed Group Defections 2025 Policy Brief. Institute for Security Studies, 2025. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/pages/1759235831584-Adhoc-pub-armed-group.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Adebayo |first1=Taiwo |last2=Watson |first2=Abi |title=Managing Armed Group Defections 2025 Policy Brief |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=2025 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/pages/1759235831584-Adhoc-pub-armed-group.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{adebayo2025managing, author = {Adebayo, Taiwo and Watson, Abi}, title = {{Managing Armed Group Defections 2025 Policy Brief}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2025}, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/pages/1759235831584-Adhoc-pub-armed-group.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }