By Chris Agbedo
Easter is the grammar of paradox. It proclaims life out of death, hope out of despair, return out of rupture. It is the season where endings are revised and finalities are questioned. Yet, even within its luminous promise, Easter does not practise amnesia. The resurrection does not erase the cross; it redeems it. The wounds remain visible even in glory. It is within this delicate theology of memory and renewal that Nigeria’s current security discourse must be read. In recent days, the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has found itself compelled to “clarify” remarks by the Chief of Defence Staff, Olufemi Oluyede, invoking the biblical “prodigal son” to justify the logic behind Operation Safe Corridor, a deradicalisation and reintegration programme for surrendered insurgents. What began as metaphor quickly metastasised into controversy. Words were lifted, pared down, and recast as policy indulgence. Clarification followed as it often does, not as origin, but as aftermath. But clarification, like resurrection, does not occur in a vacuum. It speaks into a landscape already marked by suffering.
Even as this debate unfolded, violence returned with grim insistence. In Jos, lives were cut short in yet another eruption of insecurity. The timing is more than incidental; it is symbolic. While the state speaks of repentance, citizens are confronted with fresh grief. While policy gestures toward reintegration, reality insists on loss. Thus, the central tension sharpens: can a nation extend the possibility of return without trivialising the weight of harm? Can it preach resurrection without appearing to forget the cross?
The CDS’s “prodigal son” metaphor gestures toward a moral universe where errancy is not final, where those who stray may yet return. It is a language of mercy, of second chances, of doors left open. Within Christian thought, especially in this Easter season, such language resonates deeply. It speaks to the human capacity for transformation. But policy is not parable. The DHQ’s clarification rightly insists on this distinction. Operation Safe Corridor, it argues, is not an amnesty programme but a strategic instrument, targeted, conditional, and embedded within a broader counter-insurgency framework. It is designed not for hardened ideologues but for those who surrender, who are screened, who are deemed low-risk. It is, in essence, the soft edge of a hard war. And yet, even sound strategy must answer to moral perception. For, to many Nigerians, especially those who have borne the brunt of insurgency, the language of the prodigal son can sound discordant. Forgiveness, when voiced too early or too abstractly, risks being heard as forgetfulness. Mercy, when unaccompanied by visible justice, may appear as imbalance.
Easter itself cautions against such imbalance. The resurrection does not bypass Good Friday; it passes through it. Redemption is not cheap; it is costly. The wounds of the crucifixion are not denied; they are transfigured. This is where the Nigerian conversation must deepen. For across the globe, a radically different philosophy in El-Salvador is unfolding under Nayib Bukele, one that rejects the language of return altogether. In Bukele’s formulation, hardened criminals are not prodigals; they are “graduates” of what he terms the “University of Crime.” The metaphor is stark, even brutal. It suggests not deviation but completion, an education in violence so thorough that rehabilitation becomes implausible.
This is not mere rhetoric. It is embodied in institutions such as the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), where the emphasis is not on reintegration but on containment. Here, incarceration is definitive, not transitional. The prison is not a corridor back to society; it is a terminus. Bukele’s “Zero Leisure” doctrine reinforces this worldview. Prisoners are compelled into labour – construction, manufacturing, public works, not as preparation for reintegration but as a form of disciplined contribution within confinement. In this schema, the criminal is not reformed; he is repurposed. To admirers, this is clarity without illusion. It rejects what Bukele calls the “perverse incentives” of leniency. It treats violence with uncompromising severity and prioritises public safety above all. To critics, it is a troubling absolutism, one that risks collapsing justice into punishment, and humanity into utility. Reports of overcrowding, custodial deaths, and due process concerns raise questions about the moral cost of such certainty.
Thus, between Nigeria’s prodigal son and El Salvador’s university graduate lies a spectrum of possibilities—and dangers. One risks excessive mercy; the other, excessive severity. One opens the door perhaps too wide; the other bolts it shut. Easter, however, refuses both extremes. For the Easter story is neither naïve about evil nor fatalistic about human nature. It acknowledges betrayal, violence, and injustice; yet insists on the possibility of renewal. But that renewal is not unconditional; it is anchored in truth. It requires confrontation with wrongdoing, not its concealment. It demands transformation, not mere declaration. In this sense, Easter offers not a policy blueprint but a moral compass.
Applied to Nigeria’s context, this compass suggests a path that is neither indulgent nor implacable. It is a path where deradicalisation is pursued, but not romanticised; where reintegration is possible, but not automatic; where justice for victims is visible, not assumed. This is where the DHQ’s clarification, though necessary, must evolve into something deeper—coherence. Clarification addresses what was said; coherence addresses what is done. If Operation Safe Corridor is to command public confidence, it must demonstrate rigour. Screening must be credible. Monitoring must be sustained. Reintegration must be conditional upon verifiable transformation. Communities affected by violence must not be passive recipients of policy but active participants in determining its terms. Above all, the state must rebalance its moral optics. For too often, it appears as though more energy is expended in explaining compassion for perpetrators than in demonstrating justice for victims. This perception, fair or not, is corrosive. It breeds cynicism. It widens the trust deficit.
Easter demands a different alignment. If there is to be resurrection, there must first be reckoning. If there is to be forgiveness, there must also be acknowledgement. If there is to be return, there must be responsibility. In practical terms, this means that deradicalisation programmes must be complemented by robust victim-support frameworks—compensation, memorialisation, psychological care, and, where possible, justice. It means that the narrative of national security must centre not only on those who surrender but also on those who have suffered. Otherwise, the symbolism becomes inverted: the prodigal is celebrated, while the faithful wounded are forgotten.
The language of the “University of Crime,” for all its clarity, also demands caution. It reminds us of the danger of closing the door entirely of declaring individuals beyond redemption. Such finality may offer immediate security dividends, but it risks entrenching a worldview where human beings are permanently defined by their worst acts. Easter resists such finality. It insists that endings are not always ends. But it also insists that beginnings are not cheap. Thus, the Nigerian state must walk a narrow path, between hope and realism, mercy and justice, strategy and morality. It must resist the temptation to resolve complex dilemmas through simple metaphors. For neither the prodigal son nor the university graduate can fully capture the layered realities of insurgency. What is required is not rhetorical flourish but ethical consistency. Words must align with actions. Policies must reflect principles. And above all, the state must speak in a language that acknowledges the full spectrum of its audience—the repentant insurgent, yes, but also the grieving citizen. For a nation cannot rise on selective memory.
Easter teaches that resurrection is meaningful only because the wounds are remembered. The empty tomb does not cancel the cross; it completes its meaning. So too for Nigeria. If it is to move toward peace, toward its own form of national resurrection, it must carry its wounds honestly. It must ensure that in opening doors for some, it does not close the space of justice for others. It must prove, not merely proclaim, that mercy and accountability can coexist. Until then, every clarification will remain what it currently risks being: a necessary defence of intent, but an insufficient answer to pain.
And in a country where the echoes of violence have not yet faded, it is not clarity alone that is required but credibility. For, in the final reckoning, resurrection without memory is illusion. And peace without justice is only a pause between conflicts. A nation that forgets too quickly does not heal; it merely postpones its pain. Memory is not a burden to be discarded but a compass to be consulted. It warns against easy narratives, against premature closure, against the seduction of declaring victory where wounds still fester. True renewal is not the erasure of scars but their transformation into safeguards; i.e., reminders that guide future choices and restrain old errors. Justice, in this sense, is not vengeance; it is equilibrium. It is the slow, deliberate work of restoring moral balance, of assuring the innocent that their suffering counts and of signaling to the guilty that accountability is not negotiable. Without this balance, reconciliation becomes fragile, a thin veneer stretched over unresolved grievance.
If Nigeria must rise, it must do so with both eyes open, one on mercy, the other on memory. It must resist the impatience to move on and instead cultivate the courage to reckon. It is only a peace that remembers can endure, and only a justice that is seen can persuade. Anything less is not resurrection, but reprieve.
