Lives

When the doors to the emergency room in “The Pitt” swing open and a new patient arrives, we, like the doctors, are on high alert, wondering what the acclaimed medical drama is about to throw at us.

We know two things: The actors will be superb. And it’s best not to become too attached to the characters they’re playing.

Five of those actors earned Emmy nominations for Season 2 guest turns on “The Pitt” last month, a long-overdue return to the time when the guest categories regularly rewarded working actors doing exemplary work.

Even better: Two of the five “Pitt” nominees self-submitted their performances after HBO Max, looking to streamline its submissions in the guest categories, did not put them forward.

If you watched the second season of the show, you could probably name the actors who made the Emmys’ guest list: Tina Ivlev, heartbreaking as the sexual assault survivor; Brittany Allen, poignant as the dying mom; Tal Anderson, combative and funny as Dr. King’s neurodivergent sister, who craves independence from her protective sibling; Ernest Harden Jr., devastating as the doomed Louie; and Jeff Kober, who, playing Dr. Robby’s motorcycle mechanic, has some of the most affecting scenes in the season.

HBO Max entered Ivlev, Harden and Anderson, leaving Allen and Kober to pony up the $225 to submit themselves, joining the ranks of 84 entrants for guest actor and 51 for guest actress. (To be eligible to compete in guest, actors must appear in less than 50% of a show’s eligible episodes.) Eight other actors appearing on “The Pitt” also self-submitted.

“The three actors that HBO put forward delivered beautiful, human work that resonated deeply with audiences, and they were in a tough position having so many actors who had all delivered great performances,” Allen told me over a call from her Pasadena home.

“Though at first there was a moment of disappointment, I quickly moved on from that,” Allen continues. “I didn’t take it personally because as an actor, you get good at not taking things personally.”

Kober, calling from the Valley, signs off on that sentiment. He won a daytime Emmy in 2022 for “General Hospital” after he submitted himself.

“I guess that’s how the Emmys work for me,” he says, laughing. “I don’t know any other way.”

There is precedent for self-submission success at the Emmys. Three “Game of Thrones” cast members — Gwendoline Christie, Alfie Allen and Carice van Houten — entered themselves in 2019 and were nominated. Kelly Jenrette did the same in 2018 for “The Handmaid’s Tale” and earned a nod.

For Allen, it came down to believing in herself and the work she did on “The Pitt.” As her seven-episode arc aired, strangers often stopped her at her local Trader Joe’s and at the park with her 3-year-old son to tell her how moved they were by her performance and her character Roxie’s decision to accept that her life was coming to an end and say goodbye.

But, good as it was and seen as it was, that work didn’t translate into landing an agent. Having recently turned 40, Allen figured she had nothing to lose, having reached an age where she wasn’t “as worried about being perceived as the quiet little girl who doesn’t ruffle any feathers.”

In a challenging industry, that approach has resonated deeply with her peers.

“I’ve had similar moments in the past where I’ve had a memorable role on a high-profile show and I’ve thought, ‘Maybe this will make it a little easier moving forward’ and it hasn’t,” Allen says. “So if ever there was a time to go, ‘I’m going to try to put my name out there in a way that might make me a little more bankable,’ this is it.”

Kober, 72, has had ups and downs over the course of his 40-year acting career and like Duke, the grounded mentor he played on “The Pitt,” he possesses a calm acuity when talking about the profession.

“Acting is the most profoundly spiritual career a person could have because you don’t get into it unless you need approval, and then when you get that approval, you find it doesn’t do a thing for you,” Kober says. “Then you’ve got to find a way to do something with this thing you love that isn’t about getting approval. It’s only when you’re not working for that when you know the work matters.”

With his shoulder-length hair, goatee and go-with-the-flow manner, Kober gives off distinct vibes of another Jeff — Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski.

“I have heard that comparison made,” Kober says, smiling.

Both Kober and Allen express deep appreciation for “The Pitt” as a workplace where actors can come in and do the kind of work that they aspire to do, work that resonates with audiences and reminds them why they entered the profession in the first place.

“I love being on set,” Allen says, “so going to Warner Bros. every morning as the sun rose and watching that miniature city come to life and having the privilege of working in an environment that is so ripe for accessing truth and play and shared humanity was a gift. When Roxie came along, I saw it as the epitome of what I want to offer as an actor and as a person in this life.”

Because of her character’s fate, Allen will not be returning to “The Pitt.” The fate of Duke, diagnosed with a life-threatening ascending aortic aneurysm, is ambiguous. Dr. Robby encourages him to follow up with further tests, which Duke agrees to do if Robby promises to return from his sabbatical and let him take his Triumph Bonneville for a ride.

So … Duke’s coming back, right?

“One would think,” Kober says, hopeful. But then, he jokes that maybe there will be a line next season where someone in the ER says, “Did you hear about Duke? What a shame.”

“Or he could come back in Season 4, who knows,” Kober adds, noting he has heard nothing from the show’s producers. “One thing I’ve learned over the years as an actor is the importance of letting go. That’s the life of an actor.”

New Delhi, India — Authorities dispatched workers early to New Delhi on the morning of July 26 to paint over the graffitied walls near the Jantar Mantar observatory.

A day earlier, protests over an exam leak scandal, led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), had led to the ousting of India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The entry curve of the protest strip read: “#2026 Gen-Z REVOLUTION!!!”

A man in his early twenties climbed a tree carrying a powerful loudspeaker and blasted a song. “Azadi, give me freedom! Azadi, give me freedom! Azadi, give me freedom!” The crowd followed the words, with their hands raised in the air.

Azadi, translated as “freedom” in English, a popular hip-hop song from the Bollywood film Gully Boy, became the anthem of the student protests in one of the biggest challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in years.

Fast-paced video footage of police personnel beating students at New Delhi’s Parliament Street gave a new lease of life to the nearly decade-old track.

It was not just in Delhi – the chants reverberated in other cities such as Jaipur, Lucknow and Mumbai.

Just a decade ago, Azadi was among the most radioactive words — and criminalised protest slogans — in Delhi, for which student leaders were jailed for treason.

After thousands of protesters returned home following the minister’s resignation last month, the lights at Jantar Mantar had gone out. But rows of bright-yellow metal police barricades still lined the street. Many of them were painted over by protesters. One of them read, in red: “Umar, Sharjeel, Gulfisha were here before you”.

The journey of the Azadi chant — from Pakistan’s feminist movement, the Kashmiri resistance, to the mainstream in India — charts the evolution of both a political slogan and student politics and activism in India under Modi’s rule over the last decade.

‘Criminalising university spaces’

December 9, 2016, was supposed to be a casual evening at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), one of India’s premier public universities that for decades has also been a cauldron of political activism.

A group of students coming together to meet was just another banal event. This meeting was to discuss capital punishment in India, looking at the case of a Kashmiri, hanged for an armed attack on India’s parliament in 2001.

At least, that’s how Banojyotsna Lahiri, a close friend of Umar Khalid and one of the organisers of the event, who spoke to Al Jazeera, remembered that winter evening.

Indian TV media channels, seen as friendly to Modi’s government, made the event a national political flashpoint, repeatedly airing footage of students chanting Azadi slogans, led by then JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar.

Pro-Modi media labelled the students as “sympathisers of terrorists” and some channels even aired doctored clips about the event.

Students like Khalid and JNU became household names as the controversy “blew out of proportion,” Lahiri said.

“Intense media trial picked up. It was a targeted campaign: propagating that antinational students lived off taxpayers’ money,” Lahiri recalled. Within days, sedition charges and arrests followed, with Khalid and others released on bail a few weeks later.

The JNU has been a traditional bastion of left-liberal politics, which also puts it in the crosshairs with the country’s Hindu majoritarian right, especially under Modi. But it was not the only university with popular anti-establishment politics at the time.

After a Dalit student, Rohith Vemula, died by suicide in Hyderabad, in southern India, alleging caste discrimination, the Central University there erupted in protests, followed by a government crackdown.

These events in early 2016 kicked off a government campaign that gradually eroded space for dissent and expression in India’s public universities. Students said this has worsened over the years.

Right-wing goons attacked student leaders. Khalid was shot at in New Delhi. Universities blocked permissions to hold discussions, film screenings or protests.

“It requires a lot of courage to be a student activist or leader in India, after coming from small towns,” Apoorvanand, a professor of Hindi at Delhi University, said.

“It is the first time in independent India where the government has undertaken a coordinated, well-thought-out attack on student activism.”

Lahiri said that the media campaign led to serious repercussions for those involved in the protests.

“The tag of antinational was accepted in wider Indian imagination, outside universities and these students [like Khalid] could never shed it,” Lahiri said.

In 2019, protests erupted against proposed amendments to India’s citizenship laws, which were seen as discriminatory against Muslims and rendering them second-class citizens.

Several Muslim student leaders in Delhi shot to national prominence for their fiery speeches and organising protests against the proposed Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The government appeared to step back from a nationwide screening of who qualifies as an Indian citizen amid the protests.

Another crackdown followed, jailing dozens of prominent student activists and burying their cases under piles of charges, including terrorism.

After the citizenship protests in 2019, which ran into 2020, students say the spaces in universities for protest shrank even further.

Police presence and inquiries were beefed up; students allege that several politically biased appointments to university administrations were made, and funding for research and institutions was slashed.

Six years on, student leaders like Khalid, who was rearrested, and Sharjeel Imam continue to be imprisoned without trial.

The journey of ‘Azadi’

After the controversy in 2016, the visuals of JNU reverberating with Azadi slogans inspired a music producer, Dub Sharma, to layer electronic beats over the crowd chants, which flows as the central melody.

Those slogans called for freedom from caste-based hierarchy, capitalism, hunger, and to break free from the influence of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

Three years later, the track was tapped by director Zoya Akhtar for her 2019 Bollywood flick, Gully Boy, inspired partly by the poverty of rappers in Mumbai’s slums. Sharma recreated the song for the movie — and recruited popular Mumbai artist Divine to rap to it.

But the revised version of the song only retained “freedom from hunger” from the crowd’s original chants, omitting other calls for social justice. The film’s team faced criticism for hollowing out the original track but they defended it, arguing that the track was altered to suit the film’s own arc.

Seven years ago, in the recreated version, Divine rapped about income inequality, politicians’ privileged children and called on people to take over a corrupt system — all of which have become the central theme of Gen Z protests across the world.

Under Modi, India has continued to slide in multiple democratic indices. This year, Sharma’s rehashed score became the anthem of the students’ resistance, calling for wider educational reforms.

The earliest modern political life of the Azadi chant can be traced to Pakistan’s feminist resistance to General Zia-ul-Haq’s military dictatorship in the 1980s. The late Indian feminist activist Kamla Bhasin recalled being inspired by the chant’s fluidity and adopting it to the Indian subcontext, making the calls suitable to specific protests.

Kashmiri resistance to Indian occupation adopted the slogan in the late 1980s as well. The left liberal movement in New Delhi caught up, too. But their calls to freedom were specific to their unique contexts.

A year before Bhasin passed away in 2021, she referred to the Azadi chants in an interview as “a living, breathing slogan”.

“This slogan grows every day, it evolves every day. Its meaning is not set in stone.”

Beginners’ guide to protesting in Delhi

A month after India’s chief justice controversially equated India’s unemployed youth with cockroaches and parasites, the insult caught the national imagination last June.

A Boston University graduate, Abhijeet Dipke, casually wondered: “What if all cockroaches come together?” in a post on X. He then started a social media campaign, under the self-named Cockroach Janta Party, and went viral on the internet. It gained more than 22 million followers on Instagram, more than double Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been in power since 2014.

Dipke returned to India, pledging to launch an agitation, channelling support in calling for education reforms starting with the resignation of the former education minister, after a series of examination scandals that affected millions of Indian students.

On June 6, he landed in New Delhi and came straight to the Jantar Mantar protest site, where he stood with Neha Bora, the national president of All India Students Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

Bora, a slight 29-year-old, had been with AISA for eight years, since her college days in Delhi’s JNU.

“[The Cockroach movement] did not have any idea about what might happen, or what to expect here,” she told Al Jazeera, sitting cross-legged in a loose T-shirt. “They didn’t know what to do. They were excited but also scared.”

Bora said student unions, like hers, “helped the protest stand” and take shape.

After the protest occupied the Jantar Mantar strip, defying frequent police orders to vacate, Bora’s AISA, alongside the Student Federation of India (SFI), another prominent left-wing student organisation, organised a protest camp. Six students joined educator-turned-activist Sonam Wangchuk, 59, on a hunger strike.

For a month, student volunteers from these organisations took shifts at the protest site, making sure it was occupied at all times. They gave the protest slogans, placards, and a voice that helped bring it international prominence.

“Sit-in means a lot of repetition for those people who you’re appealing to join,” Bora said, describing challenges. “As a student organisation, we knew the science behind keeping protest alive: bring in different sections of society to support the movement, like lawyers, professors and farmers.”

The Jantar Mantar protest was particularly remarkable in ways that experienced protest organisers — whose politics for years has been criminalised or sidelined — quietly equipped a younger generation to organise what, from the outside, appeared to be a leaderless movement, political analysts say.

With this came the same playbook from opponents to delegitimise the students, said Bora. For weeks, they fought back against “baseless conspiracies and allegations of being antinationals or foreign-funded”. At one point, Education Minister Pradhan called the protesters the “B-team of terrorists”.

However, this time, criminalising the young protesters did not work, and the demonstration continued to grow in popularity. Rather, the movement, campaigning on education issues, gave the student organisation a shot at gaining a foothold in national politics, said Apoorvanand.

Rediscovering ‘Azadi’

This summer, the grammar of Indian politics appeared to flip in the Gen Z protest wave. A stroll through the protest strip, reverberating with Azadi chants, raised a question: what had changed in New Delhi since 2016?

Before peeling back the layers, Lahiri, Khalid’s friend, insists that one needs to settle on a baseline: “The earlier citizenship protests were for Muslims, led by Muslims. Their names were Muslims, therefore [they were] easier to criminalise.” Several political analysts agree.

By contrast, none of the most prominent names in this year’s student protests was Muslim — though the organisers repeatedly called out the “hate and divisive politics” of the ruling government, which has been criticised for alleged targeted attacks on minorities.

Mohammad Junaid, a volunteer at the site, became the most visible Muslim face at the Jantar Mantar strip. Even before everyone had returned home after the protest ended, Junaid and his family members were picked up and harassed by police, he said.

At one point, the Cockroach leaders asked the protesters to refrain from chanting “negative” Azadi slogans. That made no difference among the crowd, though.

N Sai Balaji, a student activist who served as AISA’s national president from 2019 to 2023, said there is a clear difference between the student leaders’ pre and post-citizenship protests, where they have moved on from being objects of representation to owning the narrative.

“It’s just not the same kind. They are tech-savvy 1786809159, know how to integrate their message, and they know the language of the internet so well because they grew up there,” he told Al Jazeera. He compared this with his own generation growing up watching TV.

“That is why the traditional media was useless for them. Rather, they became the media themselves,” Balaji said. “They owned their story. Something we could not do.”

Balaji stressed that social media influencers and alternative media spaces reported the protest and became the main medium of amplification. Many began boycotting traditional media outlets seen as friendly to the government. “And no one was calling them antinationals in this new space,” he said.

Instead, for instance, when videos of Bora on hunger strike were watched by millions, Balaji said, it made people question the status quo. “India’s aspirational class, who felt betrayed by the government’s broken promises, found hope in people who were sitting selflessly,” Balaji stressed.

“That’s where the whole propaganda vanishes. Suddenly, the so-called antinationals become humans too,” he added.

Lahiri said the current generation of student leaders broke through traditional moulds of activism. “With their language, imagery, and Instagram reels, people outside universities are now able to connect more,” she said.

And with spaces inside universities criminalised, the students’ politics are yet again spilling out onto the streets, added Lahiri. She went a step further to note that unlike her own generation, the new student protesters are “trying to do politics under even harsher circumstances”.

Call it shallow, Lahiri argued, breaking into a laugh, but just saying, “Fu** Modi,” is more of a slap in the face, instead of our sentiments coated in academic language.

Out of the flood of online memes and posters, one stayed with Lahiri. It read: “Umar Khalid walked, so Gen Z could run.” She is not sure if Khalid would agree with this, but she does.

For Bora’s part, she told Al Jazeera, the 2019 citizenship movement led by Muslims “inspired a revolution inside” her, which keeps her going even today.

Painting her predecessors as antinationals and traitors of India, Bora said, the Modi government criminalised the mere expression of the word Azadi by “creating so much noise around it.”

However, “when students faced police brutality — when the wounds of those batons were fresh on their bodies — one understands that the Azadi slogan is the most radical assertion of fundamental rights in India”, Bora said.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) warned Monday that the sex lives of at least two other lawmakers would be disclosed to the Senate Ethics Committee if the Senate subpoena for nearly five years of his personal diaries is enforced.

Packwood insisted that he is not trying to “blackmail” senators into voting to reject the unanimous demand of the ethics panel, which is conducting an inquiry into charges that Packwood repeatedly made unwanted sexual advances to women on his staff.

Rather, the Oregon lawmaker said, it is the Ethics Committee that wants entries from his diary concerning the longtime affair of another senator and an intimate relationship between a member of the House Democratic leadership and a Senate staff aide.

In his dealings with the committee, Packwood said, he concealed the name of the prominent Democrat by masking it with a piece of paper.

“The Ethics Committee lifted the piece of paper and saw the name and demanded that we produce that page in the diary,” Packwood said. “These were not threats by my lawyer, that if my diary is subpoenaed, that I will tell these things.”

Sources close to Packwood said he fears that some of his diary entries would become public through leaks to the media, even if the committee itself does not disclose them.

The committee said in a report to the Senate last Thursday that Packwood reneged on an agreement to allow a neutral third party to screen the diaries and exclude those parts covered by attorney-client or doctor-patient privileges or related to personal, private family matters.

It voted, 6 to 0, to issue a subpoena for Packwood’s diaries from 1989 to the present, concluding that “the documents in their entirety may be relevant and probative” in connection with its investigation of Packwood’s conduct.

Unless a compromise can be reached, the Senate is expected to vote shortly on whether to back up the Ethics Committee by authorizing it to seek a federal court order for the diaries or to uphold Packwood’s protests that his privacy is being invaded.

Packwood told the Senate that he has kept a personal diary for 25 years that now amounts to 8,200 single-spaced pages. He sets aside time early each morning to dictate his thoughts about events of the previous day, apparently covering both his personal life as well as his official duties.

Entries cover his “hopes and dreams and despair,” the 61-year-old Packwood said, including his discussions with former President Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal, as well as meetings with Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, on tax reform.

In addition, as Packwood’s attorney James F. Fitzpatrick said in a statement Friday, the diary also has information on the senator’s “private consensual personal relationships” with women who were not on his staff.

Senate records disclosed that Packwood has raised more than $280,000 for a legal defense fund since the Ethics Committee started its inquiry early this year, including a $10,000 donation from Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) and a $1,000 contribution from Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.).

Lobbyists and other major campaign contributors have put up most of the money.

Packwood, accused by more than two dozen women of sexual harassment over the last two decades, also has been charged with using his Senate staff to try to silence his accusers by intimidation.

Some 270,000 people have been forced to evacuate parts of Western France and central Spain – while a major incident has been declared in the Cairngorms National Park

British holidaymakers have described running for their lives just yards from a raging wildfire.

The terrifying scenes come as 270,000 people have been forced to flee as blazes continue to rip through parts of Southern Europe. Fire crews on Saturday were braced to drop fire-busting chemicals from a cargo plane in the Gironde region in Western France, where an inferno has been roaring since Wednesday.

And with the wind direction shifting, officials fear the flames are moving dangerously close to the nearby city of Bordeaux. Authorities have ordered people between the fire and the city to evacuate, including from parts of western suburbs and other towns and villages.

The French military have been drafted in to help and the Spanish government has declared a national emergency. Among those caught up was Brit David Morton and his family, who came within 500 yards of the main fire in Cap Ferret peninsula.

He said: “The flames were higher than full-size forest pine trees, so five or six storeys high, and it was clear this was a fire that was out of control at that point. Our phones were all flashing and bleeping; there was a message saying we had to evacuate immediately and drive on the one road out of the [Cap Ferret] peninsula. We literally threw everything into our suitcases and within 15 minutes were in the hire car.”

Zac Morrison, 21, described similarly dramatic scenes. We had the gendarmerie [French military] going door to door – it was something like out of a movie – we had to take everything,” said Zac, from London. “Other people have been sleeping in schools and warehouses and the beaches have had people just waiting for the go ahead – there’s people on the beach here with their suitcases. I’ve heard about houses burning in just an hour, it’s scary but sadly people here are getting used to it.”

Other Brits have moved to different areas in France to continue their hols. Mark Dorey, from Leeds, decided to drive to the Dordogne with his wife and three children after being evacuated from a campsite near Parentis-en-Born. He said: “You wouldn’t believe it, but me and my two boys were watching a Queen tribute act at the campsite bar – straight after a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody someone stopped them to say we were being evacuated at about 10pm.

While the wildfires show no sign of slowing, the Foreign Office last night chose not to impose warings against travel to France or Spain. France’s minister for international partnerships Éléonore Caroit told tourists: “You have entire areas that are fine, you’re seeing similar phenomena in Spain and other countries.

“I’m in Paris and nothing is happening, and most other regions are OK, so do please come to France and do not cancel your travel plans. But wherever you are, please do be advised as to what might be happening.”

In Madrid the fires are in the wider region far outside the city centre – and authorities are battling to stop different fires merging. But the flames have already shut down a facility for US space agency Nasa 37 miles west of the Spanish capital. The city’s regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso said it was the “worst fire in the history of the region.”

Successive heat waves with record-shattering temperatures have turned forests and scrublands into tinderboxes. Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this year in Spain, an area the size of Rome.

Other European nations are stepping into help, with Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia already providing water-dumping planes and helicopters to the Spanish and French fire fronts.

Things are burning closer to home too, as emergency services continue to battle a blaze in the Cairngorms National Park. The fire has now been declared a major incident, and smoke could be seen 59 miles away in Aberdeen.

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney said it is “essential people avoid the affected areas,” adding: “The wind has changed direction overnight, which means the track of the fire has altered once again and the threat to Nethy Bridge has reduced, for the moment at least. Ground and helicopter resources are being focused on the current path of the fire and new fire breaks constructed.”

It’s no joke: John Oliver of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” is checking into “General Hospital,” the ABC soap opera.

The host of the weekly series that takes sharply comedic aim at government and institutions announced during his June 28 episode that he will appear on the daytime soap “General Hospital” on July 2, 3 and 6. No details about his role were revealed except that it will be a “substantial guest role.”

And that’s not the only soap he’ll be in this summer. He will also have a role on “Days of Our Lives,” streaming on Peacock, on Aug. 11, 12 and 14.

The appearances are the culmination of Oliver’s pleas to soap opera producers during the March 8 installment of his show that they consider him for a part. An unapologetic devotee of the outrageous antics and high melodrama which characterize the genre, Oliver said, “Write me a role and I will be on your set so fast it will make your head swim.”

In a statement, Oliver celebrated the realization of his dream: “‘General Hospital’ was everything I hoped it would be. It’s a true honor to be a small stain on the history of this illustrious show.”

The series’ executive producer Frank Valentini said in a separate statement that Oliver made an offer they could not refuse.

“When John Oliver publicly threw down the gauntlet and said he wanted to appear on a soap, we didn’t hesitate for a second,” he said. “He was everything you’d hope he’d be: prepared, professional, funny, and genuinely kind to everyone on set. He plays an integral character in the story, and I can’t wait for fans to see who he crosses paths within Port Charles.”

“General Hospital,” which airs weekdays on ABC and streams on Hulu, is in its 64th year and stands as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production.

On the March 8 episode, Oliver said he was jealous of celebrities such as Katy Perry, Snoop Dogg and Smokey Robinson who would pop up on various soaps. He was particularly envious of sports pundit Stephen A. Smith who has had a recurring role on “General Hospital,” playing a shady figure known only as “Brick.”

Oliver made it clear that he was not interested in a brief walk-on playing himself. He wanted to play a character, and have a “juicy role” that involved murder or “slapping.” He also required that there be a close-up of his face.

BBC Morning Live presenter Gethin Jones co-hosts the show alongside Helen Skelton and Michelle Ackerley

Gethin Jones has been a co-host of BBC’s Morning Live for more than five years.

The 48-year-old has won over audiences with his approachable demeanour as he fronts the daily magazine programme alongside Helen Skelton and Michelle Ackerley.

However, the former Blue Peter host has now been reminded of the BBC’s editorial guidelines after he reportedly contravened broadcasting rules while on air.

Gethin is a longstanding ambassador for the Welsh heritage jewellery brand Clogau and has appeared in numerous promotional campaigns for the company. He even has a Clogau ‘wife’ – model Nikki Chislett, with whom he promoted last Christmas’s festive jewellery range while sporting a wedding band.

But The Mail on Sunday has now reported that Gethin has also been seen wearing various timepieces from Clogau while hosting Morning Live – which places him in breach of stringent BBC guidelines, reports Wales Online.

The corporation’s regulations stipulate that presenters ‘must not appear on-air wearing clothing or using products or services which they have been contracted to promote’.

BBC Studios told The Mirror: “We have clear guidelines around presenters’ commercial activities while working with the BBC, and Gethin has been reminded of these guidelines.”

According to The Mail on Sunday, throughout the past eight months Gethin has sported numerous Clogau watches on Morning Live, including a £550 model featuring a stainless-steel case and black bezel. Another timepiece, priced at £420, features a polished stainless-steel case with gold plating and is accompanied by a black leather strap.

He has additionally been spotted sporting a stainless-steel watch displaying a textured black dial alongside contrasting silver-tone hands and numerals.

Gethin becomes the most recent personality to seemingly flout BBC regulations. Monty Don, 70, received a reprimand last month following his appearance in a £300 Barbour jacket while filming Gardeners’ World – having previously featured in an advertising campaign for the brand.

The Mirror revealed that the jacket features in promotional material for Barbour’s Way of Life campaign, which prompts fans to “shop the look” showcased by the television presenter.

At the time, the BBC stated: “We have clear guidelines around presenters’ commercial activities while working with the BBC, and Monty has been reminded of these guidelines.”

Morning Live is on BBC One weekdays at 9.30am and BBC iPlayer

As a pariah child in search of Islamic knowledge, Goni Abubakar has no clue what it means to hold a gun and pull the trigger. He is just an almajiri who runs errands for his cleric master in Bama, a town in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. He learns to recite Quran verses by heart; he is one of the brightest pupils under the cleric’s tutelage. In the beginning, the messages are clear: have faith in Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, and the Day of Judgement. Every pupil carries these heavy words around and keenly believes in them. They say the Quranic verses that match those words by heart: “O you who have believed, fear Allah and believe in His Messenger; He will [then] give you a double portion of His mercy and make for you a light by which you will walk and forgive you; and Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.”

The preaching is pious until peril pierces the heart of the preacher. 

The teacher sells groceries, and Goni doubles as his shop assistant. Detached from his parents as a child, he was now a teen, tending only to the bidding of his mentor. Dozens of children are on this path to seek knowledge, but Goni is the teacher’s delight: fierce, smart, and completely loyal. Their earliest form of education is the Tsangaya, a traditional Quranic education in northern Nigeria, and most of them have not attended any formal secular school before they are thrown under the control of a man they all call “mallam”. The morning and evening classes are held in the shade of a tree and are led by the teacher, who preaches to them the ways of Islam.

Kids like Goni know what it means to grow up in a local community. A child can sing through the neighbourhood, begging anyone there for food and water. Local farmers prosper in peace after months of tilling and cultivating the land. People sleep at night without fear of being raided by assailants or militants. Fear and terror consumed the town when Boko Haram’s strange ideologies spread like wildfire into the communities. Goni’s teacher is among the first to embrace the ideologies propagated by Boko Haram’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf. As his preaching changed, his way of life changed too, beaming terror and extremism infused into the hearts of children under his mentorship.

In 2009, when Boko Haram went underground before re-emerging in 2010, Goni was already a 12-year-old. Too young and naive to ask questions, he and dozens of children followed their tutor to join the insurgent group that would later destabilise Nigeria. Now, in the northeastern region, the Boko Haram insurgency has uprooted over three million people and killed over 350,000, with government authorities failing to rein in the deadly scourge. Armed violence has spread beyond the region’s borders into parts of the northwestern and north-central regions.

Goni would become a grown man, swallowing the rulings of terrorists until he could no longer bear them. He now seeks redemption and reintegration through the state-backed deradicalisation programme. While it appears he has left a life of violence and attacks for good, it’s not that simple. For him and many other men in his shoes, post-Boko Haram life presents some puzzles that test the true efficacy of the deradicalisation scheme.

Are the terrorist deserters genuinely seeking redemption or only trying to survive? For months – between November 2025 and May 2026 – HumAngle probed the complexities of the former insurgents’ lives, documenting their journeys from the past to the present, their struggles to become civilians again, their secret frontline deals with the military, and the fragile peace their reintegration poses to the civilian population.

Snaring the cat

When Goni joined Boko Haram as a teen, his master’s preachings had switched from admonishing children under his watch to have strong faith in their religion to brainwashing them into a life of violence. They embraced it, truly believing that spilling the blood of people who don’t believe in their ideology was the clearest pathway to paradise. Elsewhere in Borno, in the Malam Fatori area, Ali Bukhar also listened to the sermons of Boko Haram’s jihadists. Those sermons summoned the beast in him and took away the best of his humanity. He joined them convinced that true salvation was immersed in the ideology of killing and maiming.

“In the preachings, they’d emphasise that if you died in the cause, you are a martyr. That you are going to paradise straight,” Ali recalls. He joined as an adult in 2014 during the peak of the Boko Haram emergence. About five months after joining the group, he was asked to attend training. His handlers took him to a riverine area and gave him a gun. “They have a specific instructor whose job is solely to train new intakes. You’d train for about four to five months. After the training, they’d return you to the Markaz [Arabic word for headquarters or centre]. And when it is time to go out for a fight, they’d give you guns.”

Suleiman Mohammad tells a slightly different story. He joined Boko Haram in 2013, during the first Baga attack. The militants and the military had been locked in a fierce battle that cost hundreds of civilians their lives and thousands their homes. A retaliatory raid after a military base was attacked in Baga took a bloody turn for mostly civilians, brewing a trust deficit in the operational methods of Nigerian forces in their fight against terrorism. The insurgent group took advantage of the situation to recruit young people into its unholy ways. Suleiman was among hundreds of people brought into the system after the Baga bloody saga and the uprising that followed. He was a herder in Malam Fatori and had grown up through the local Tsangaya education system.

“So after the Baga attack, I was contacted by the fighters who turned out to be from my village,” Suleiman reminisces. “We studied together when we attended Tsangaya and Islamiyya a long time ago. They told me how the other brothers were with them. They told me stories of how they recite the Quran collectively and also wage ‘holy war’ together. Then they invited me to join them. So, we made an appointment to meet at Mairari.”

A week later, the terrorists came as agreed and met with Suleiman’s father in his home. 

“Your son is joining us in the cause of Allah. He’d work for Allah,” the terrorists say. 

“Allah’s cause?” the father wonders. “Jihad is mandatory for all muslims. And since he has agreed to go with you, I have no objections.” 

The terrorists had come with guns and machetes, Suleiman notes, suggesting that his father was made to agree under duress. “That was how I joined them. We had carried out several attacks ever since. From Mairari, Tungushe, and others. In fact, we held Mairari – under Magumeri – captive for quite some time before it was recaptured by the military.”

People joined the Boko Haram insurgency for different reasons. For Goni and his cohorts, it was a case of misguided faith rooted in brainwashing and psychological manipulation. The story is different for many others. The fire of the burning insurgency started from the charismatic oratory and radical sermons by the founder of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf, between 2002 and 2009. Since at least 2021, HumAngle has interviewed dozens of defectors who revealed why they joined the deadly group before surrendering to a deradicalisation scheme organised by the government. Mohammed took advantage of the dysfunctions within the Nigerian state to campaign against a secular system of governance and, by extension, democracy.

Testimonies from defectors and custodians of Boko Haram’s history reveal that the post-2009 state repression, especially the actual brutality of the Nigerian military and police against civilians, and the uprising that trailed it, were among the factors that drove young people into insurgency. At the time, “Tura Takai Bango” was the mantra for the agitation, literally meaning “they had been pushed to the wall”. The era and the ugly events that unfolded encapsulate the desperation that leads civilians to affiliate with insurgents. When the state’s counter-insurgency tactics involve collective punishment, the civilian population often finds itself caught in a “double jeopardy” where both the state and the insurgents are viewed as existential threats. 

Isa Alamndiri, one of the victims of the state repression, told HumAngle how he witnessed the summary execution of young people in 2016, in the Marte Local Government Area (LGA), on the grounds that they were shielding terrorists. “They came and gathered all of us in the village. They then separated the elderly and killed all the youths. They shot over 30 youths that day. Their reason was that we were harbouring Boko Haram in our midst,” Isa says. 

Another witness of what many believe pushed youths in the state to the wall, Musa Kurama, recalls that the Nigerian military invaded his village in Meleri, also in Marte, to burn his house, among many others, to the ground, saying that the entire community was a hideout for terrorists. The cycle of violence forced young adults and naive teenagers to take the insurgents’ offer of “protection”, which was a predatory alternative to state-sponsored destruction.

Boko Haram also targeted schools for attacks, deliberately conducting mass kidnappings such as in Chibok and Dapchi to enforce their radical ideology by making secular educational institutions unsafe. This insurgent tactic strategically provides a supply of young captives who were groomed as fighters or forced into “marriages” that facilitate the group’s long-term sustainability. The state’s failure to secure these environments has led to the closure of over 600 schools in the region, creating a lost generation of children who are more susceptible to recruitment because of the absence of alternative futures.

Jihad: ‘Pathway to paradise’

Goni has grown up knowing nothing but violence and bloodshed, and now claims he’s out of the messy circle. He smiles as he speaks, but when he remembers how he joined other terrorists to pillage villages, uproot people from their homes, farmlands, and abduct scores, he furrows his brow. 

“Before we go out, we would prepare. They’d mobilise 100 to 200 fighters, give them arms, and say, ‘We are going out to wage a holy war’.  Then we would charge into military barracks,” he tells HumAngle curtly. “I believe we were deceived by our masters because they don’t practice what they preach and twist religious verses to suit their evil acts and intentions.”

Regardless of how and why they joined, newly recruited insurgents are made to believe that killing and spilling the blood of anyone not following their templates of violence has only one name: jihad. Most defectors we spoke to corroborated this during separate interviews in 2025 and later in 2026.

Experts and scholars in political science, human rights, and peace and conflict studies argue that Boko Haram weaponised the concept of jihad to manipulate its followers into believing keenly in killing and destroying those who disagree with their ideology. In the 2021 issue of the Al-Hikmah Journal on Social Sciences and Education, for example, Issa Muhammad-Jamiu, a researcher at Kogi State University in North Central Nigeria, notes that Boko Haram’s ideology contradicts Islamic injunctions. The most disturbing aspect, he states, is the condemnation of any scholarly verdict that falls short of their view. 

“How could they attribute Islam to the prohibition of Western education, which has become a necessity, if not compulsory, to Muslims in the contemporary world? Do they mean that they are more knowledgeable and more committed to Islam than those Companions and Tabi’un who studied foreign cultures and sciences for the interest of Muslim communities?” Issa ponders.

Two sides of the coin

As Goni speaks, his lips look pale and peeling. He’s been battling typhoid and malaria and is still receiving treatment. He carries a gentle demeanour that betrays the terror he had perpetrated, and wears a blank face wrinkled with emotionlessness. For him, peace is a no-brainer when violence is pervasive.

He quips, throwing on a long, tedious smile when asked what he thinks of the concept of peace. “Peace tastes good,” he says. “Living peacefully among loved ones is greater than any other thing. I was in Njimia before leaving. I had worked in several places, including Gazuwa, my birthplace. What made me leave was recent developments. The conflict between the factions and the injustice. So, I took my weapon and left. I arrived at Konduga, where I was received. They then brought us to Bama and then to Hajj Camp.”

Goni believes that embracing peace simply means walking away from a life of pain, violence, and gnashing of teeth. Dwelling in the forest with terrorists means dining with the devil, he says. His moral postulation and spiritual freedom were destroyed in the terrorist camp. He had access to the Quran and understood its teachings, but every verse he read had to be interpreted in accordance with the sect’s teachings. He had no freedom of thought or understanding of whatever he read from the scripture. He had no meaningful life in the forest, he says, apart from destroying people’s lives.

He and many of the terrorist deserters we spoke to said they experienced pain in its most extreme form. Whenever they sustained gunshot wounds during field battles with the military, they returned to the forest almost dead. They were being treated by their locally-trained doctors, whom many of the ex-combatants described as quacks. Most times, they gave them dangerous, addictive opioids such as Tramadol and Refinol. They became addicted to these drugs to escape their daily ordeals, even after healing from the wounds. 

“They punished us for taking hard drugs they introduced to us in the first place,” Goni complains. “Sometimes a fighter could be killed just because he takes hard drugs. When they knew it was bad, why did they use it to treat us?”

Many terrorists decided to surrender to the military for different reasons. One major cause of mass defections from the terrorist camps was the sudden demise of Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram gang leader who took over the mantle of terror from Mohammed Yusuf. There had been cracks within the insurgent group, leading to the rise of the Islamic State for West African Province (ISWAP), which was formed as a rebel group against Shekau’s camp. Another thing that followed the death of Shekau in 2021 was disease and hunger outbreaks. 

The Nigerian military took advantage of Shekau’s death to launch several offensive attacks on the terrorist dens in northeastern Nigeria, destroying their logistics bases. That year, the military said it recorded thousands of defections from terrorists who surrendered to embrace peace. Once they submit themselves to the military after years of committing criminal atrocities, they are subjected to deradicalisation through the Borno Model.

HumAngle interviewed several Boko Haram deserters to examine their understanding of peace after committing grave crimes against the human population in the region. Many of them curiously oversimplified the concept, reducing it to simply switching sides and moving from deadly armed violence to living an average civilian life.

“From my understanding, peace is us leaving the group,” Ali simply says and goes ahead to recount how he joined other fighters to enslave girls for sex after kidnapping them from their homes, schools, and farms. He had been through hell as a former Boko Haram member, and now seeks solace in embracing peace by surrendering to the military. He had been imprisoned by his superiors in the terror camp and asked to surrender his arms, but he refused. “I buried it where they could not see it. I was locked up for three months. When they released me, I went and dug up my gun and left them,” he recalls.

For him and several defectors, returning to the civilian community is an exciting prospect. Despite the horror they inflicted on civilian communities as terrorists, they consider living with ordinary locals again, especially close to their families, as a peaceful reconciliation of their horrible past. “We were ignorant when we did those things in the past. But now we know better,” one of them, Abubakar Saleh, says. He was a Boko Haram commander who led dozens of fighters to dislodge communities, rape women and girls and subjugate civilian communities under terrorist control.

He has now returned to Maiduguri with his family. His wife had just given birth when we spoke to him, and he has settled well into the civilian community. To him, peace is relief from the pain that comes with being a terrorist leader. Although he enjoyed authority as a commanding fighter, his life in the forest was miserable, as he was always on the move to evade military operations and surveillance.

“Life here is better,” he affirms. “It is more comfortable and peaceful. In the forest, there is no rest. You’d hunt daily like a lion. Always changing locations. But here, no attacks.”

For civilian casualties of the terror perpetrated by many of these terrorist deserters, however, peace doesn’t come easily. For years, victims of insurgency in the northeastern region have longed for peace and reparations. Thousands of displaced people not only lost their homes, but also lost hope in ever rebuilding their lives or returning to their settlements. In parts of Borno, especially at the Shuwari displacement site, displaced people feed on the leftovers from former terrorists undergoing the government’s deradicalisation programme, a situation that has created an atmosphere of distrust and inequalities. When the Borno State government began a resettlement scheme for displaced people, they were promised protection and stipends to rebuild their lives. Many of them ended up being re-displaced by terrorists and would not get the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

Ensuring peace and justice in the North East is far more complicated than many terrorist deserters have assumed, says Ndubuisi Ani, a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Security Studies. The transitional justice expert told HumAngle that the defectors’ curious understanding of peace undermines the pains and level of destruction civilians have witnessed at the hands of terrorists. He argues that peace and justice cannot be achieved in tackling violent extremism unless there’s inclusivity, good governance, and stability.

“The state must understand that there are basic needs to be responded to (on the side of victims),” Ndubuisi explains. “A lot of communities need a lot of social contracts on the ground.”

The security expert further explains that any transitional justice scheme by the government must be victim-centred. He advised that the state must go back to its original duty of protecting citizens and ensuring peace and tranquillity in society.

“You’ve not psychologically prepared actors. How do you let the victims understand?” he asked, stating that the government can’t successfully reintegrate terrorist deserters back into society without proper public engagement. “The intent is good, but the approach is the problem.”

Seeking peace and redemption

Like many terrorist deserters, Goni accepts that he has lived a complicated life of violence and horror. This is not the time for regret, he says. It’s a moment to seek forgiveness, to retrace his steps, and perhaps to wash the blood from his own hands. When he arrived at the Hajj Camp in Maiduguri after surrendering to the military and going through the process of deradicalisation, he struggled with the guilt of the atrocities he had committed, and, to prove to the military that he had backed off from a life of bloodshed, he agreed to work in the field with soldiers fighting terrorists. He’s not alone in this. Several former combatants we spoke to said they decided to work as auxiliary operatives to fight alongside the military against Boko Haram, the same sect they once belonged to. Several other defectors noted that when they chose to work with the military – as a way to seek redemption – they were handed rifles, loaded onto the backs of patrol trucks, and sent directly into the marshes and forests they had recently fled.

Asked whether they were coerced into joining the military, Goni laughed before saying the escapade was never mandatory. 

“It is a choice,” he replies. “I may decide not to work with them again.”

It is a hard nut to crack, but the terrorist deserters say the military operatives have learned to work and walk with them.

“They arm us and take us with them. If, for instance, a Commanding Officer is going out for an operation, he’d request a certain amount of “repentants” from the Hajj Camp officials. And the officials would assign like 50 or 100 persons to him, depending on the scale of the operation,” Goni says.

By fighting the same people who recruited him into the monolithic Boko Haram camp as a teen, Goni says, he has freed himself from a lifetime of guilt. During his time with the killers, he recalls asking many of the fighters if they loved what they were doing. Those fighters feel trapped, he says; they’re homesick, but even their families have rejected them. Now that he has freed himself from the shackles of terrorism, he says he begs God for forgiveness. But while he seeks forgiveness for the atrocities he has committed, he would use every knowledge he has about the group to fight them back. That’s his way of seeking redemption.

“They give us food and allowances, and we give them intelligence. We show them the hideouts. Because we know the terrain better than they do. We know their fighting styles,” Goni brags, smiling and looking directly at the reporter. “We know their escape routes. Isn’t this helpful enough? Also, we lead the way. They’d follow behind. We charge in.”

Redemption through revenge

Ali’s life after Boko Haram is even more thrilling: he seeks redemption through revenge. He had fallen for peer pressure to join one of the most brutal terrorist organisations in existence, and his life had since remained terrifying. For years, he was a cog in the Boko Haram machine, serving with vim and vigour. He learned to repair military vehicles in the forest and became renowned as the sect’s mechanic. He would repair heavy military patrol vehicles seized by the insurgents or those stuck in the mud within the forest during ambushes.

Despite his servitude for Boko Haram’s cause, he says, his entire life with the terror group was a lie. He grew to realise that behind the Boko Haram ideology was a hail of deceit and human manipulation. Bamboozled with distorted interpretations of verses from the Quran, Ali recounts how he had joined hundreds of other fighters to trigger plague, tears, and horror in civilian communities in the name of holy war.

“The practice violates the preachings. My biggest reason was that the practice was not what the Prophet truly teaches,” he claims. “The commanders would usually stay behind, leaving a comfortable life, while the foot soldiers are left starving and fighting day and night.”

For Ali, the deal breaker with Boko Haram was during a chaotic raid in the Tungushe town of Borno. He had come under a heavy burst of military gunfire, which tore through his arm, shattering the bone. He had expected that the sect’s medical team would give him some extra care due to his critical condition, but they treated him like disposable property. 

“I was so humiliated by the sect’s medical team, as treatments were handled haphazardly,” he laments. “If it were the commanders, they would treat them swiftly with maximum care. But for fighters, there is usually no medical attention.”

For two straight years, he nursed the pain alone and grew bitter resentment for the sect and its ideologies. He realised he was nothing but a tool for achieving the commanders’ personal hunches and interests. One night, he slipped away, through the scrublands, trudging northward until he found himself around the military garrison in Monguno, where he fell flat on the ground and surrendered.

“After surrendering in Monguno, they took us to Hajj Camp in Maiduguri,” Ali tells HumAngle. “Days later, they brought forward an opportunity where you could help in the fight. You may decide to follow the military during attacks or provide them with intelligence. Whatever you think you can do. So, I said I want to fight. I have a friend who also fights alongside the soldiers. I chose to fight because I have realised that we were deceived by the group.”

Repentance or survival?

Unlike Ali and Goni, repentance has an entirely different meaning for Suleiman: it is an illusion or a political statement made by people in government. Calling him a “repentant Boko Haram” is an insult, he says. To him, that word is a subtle qualifier for a coward. With a cold voice and a sour look, he describes how he worked with ground troops to attack Timbuktu, Sambisa, and other terrorist hideouts.

His case is more of just switching sides than actual repentance. He dreads the term “repentant Boko Haram” and doesn’t hide it. As a terrorist, he lived for violence, pillaging villages and destroying people’s lives and properties. Following the rise of Abu Mushab al-Barnawi, a factional leader of the Boko Haram sect, Suleiman came under his command, joining over 100 fighters under his control. He had fought fiercely against the Nigerian military on many occasions, and he was feared for his precise brutality amid battles.

His cruelty had no bounds, as he had fought against top Nigerian military leaders, as he states, like Captain Bala, Manga, and Abu Ali, leaving scars on the town that are still visible today. He had also raided beyond Nigeria, maiming locals in the Niger Republic, especially in Diffa, Maine-Soroa, and Chabbal.

When factional infighting turned truly brutal, Suleiman chose to be on the safer side. Exhausted by the tireless internal slaughter, he left and surrendered to the military. Now, he does almost the same thing on the other side. The activity is the same, he notes, only the targets are different. 

“I am not comfortable with that name [repentant]. I don’t like it,” Suleiman says. He would frown and then laugh during the interview to convey the complexity of the terror drowning him. “In the forest, I followed someone’s commands. Here too, I am commanded and still branded repentant?”

He wears a worn Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) uniform during the interview with HumAngle, bragging about following soldiers to the battlefield against terrorists in Geidam, Marte, Kala-Bridge and Malam Fatori. Despite his defiance, however, he seems to have taken bullets for the military during counterterrorism raids in northeastern Nigeria. His four fingers are chopped off, and there are scars all over his body. It was during a joint offensive with Chadian forces in northern Monguno. An artillery explosion had torn through the military ranks and killed several soldiers and terrorist deserters fighting by their side. He would follow the forces into the fortified hideouts of Timbuktu and Sambisa, giving on-the-ground intel to navigate the terrain.

“I got this arm scar, and my fingers were chopped off while digging out a planted landmine about five months ago,” he says of another military raid he participated in. “The explosion killed two other ex-combatants and nine soldiers. When the engineer scouted and identified a planted bomb, he refused to dig it out. None of the soldiers did. So they asked me to do it. One of the wires sparked. Then it exploded. It also affected my leg.”

The deradicalisation scheme

The term “repentance”, which Suleiman and several other defectors loathe, is one of the modus operandi of the Operation Safe Corridor, a military-led deradicalisation and reintegration programme across northeastern states. Established in 2016, the programme has witnessed both criticism and appraisal from experts and affected citizens. The quest for transitional justice, following the mass atrocities committed by Boko Haram against the people and the government of Nigeria, pushed authorities to come up with peacebuilding efforts.

The federal government had introduced the judicial approach of mass trials of Boko Haram figures captured on the battlefield, but systemic failures of the legal system derailed the processes. With a conviction rate of less than 10 per cent after conducting mass trials of thousands of fighters between 2017 and 2020, public distrust in the judicial system grew rapidly. These efforts also faced hurdles due to limited resources and circumstantial evidence, as well as a massive backlog of approximately 10,000 suspected fighters awaiting trial. 

Following deficiencies in the judicial and military mechanisms, the government provided non-judicial options, such as the Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC) and, later, the Borno Model, a scheme designed to handle the mass defections of thousands of insurgents.

HumAngle reviewed at least two research studies that confirm our on-the-ground reporting on the deficiencies and the public misgivings against the counterinsurgency initiative. The independent studies, one led by Idayat Hassan, then of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), and the other by Hassan-Taiwo Adebayo of the Institute of Security Studies (ISS), noted a systemic imbalance that seemed to favour the rehabilitation of perpetrators over the survival and justice of their victims. The disparity in the attention given to terrorist deserters also fueled widespread community resentment and birthed a narrative that terrorists are being pampered at the expense of their targets. The security and transitional justice experts also assert that a flawed public appeal and information management have sparked outrage and a trust deficit on the government’s side.

One concern Taiwo’s research raised is the persistent challenges in providing sufficient economic support to Boko Haram deserters once they leave the camps. Several defectors HumAngle interviewed raised the same concern. Although they vowed to live civilian lives again, they claimed their lives in the forest were more prosperous, and they’re now facing economic hurdles after defecting. The former insurgents, now working as assets to the military, also complained of constant failed promises. When they’re called upon for operations against the terrorists, the military would pledge mouth-watering financial gains only to offer them an amount far less than what they had promised.

“Then they’d say they’ll pay us each ₦1 million or ₦1.5 million for every crucial piece of information and operation. But after a successful mission, they’d go back on their words and pay ₦100,000 or below. Whereas we have families to cater for. Wives, children, and parents,” Suleiman recounts, a claim substantiated by other former combatants we interviewed.

Wayward ways

As many defectors struggle to settle into communities, civilians also struggle to embrace them. The reason is not far-fetched: the villagers have grown resentful of former Boko Haram members who have raided their settlements, stripping them of their homes and stable lives, only to come and live next door. The moment they leave the rehabilitation camps, they escape the military’s watchful eyes. Many times, this escape means defectors choose what they do with their lives, including displaying violent tendencies against civilians. The villagers call them “repentants”, but insist their ways are wayward.

Locals, including displaced people, say so-called repentant terrorists re-terrorise them, making them relive the terror they had inflicted on them. During separate interviews, civilian villagers accused security agents of shielding defectors when they commit offences against the people. They say this has triggered a climate of silence within the Maiduguri metropolis, where everyone is scared of speaking ill of a former Boko Haram fighter, even when they’re guilty of wrongdoing. When HumAngle visited the Bama displacement camp in 2025, for instance, we saw dozens of defectors moving around aimlessly with guns and other weapons. Camp officials claimed the armed defectors were protecting displaced persons, but when we requested to speak with them, they denied us access. Displaced persons also refrained from discussing their situation, fearing persecution.

In Shuwari, a peri-urban area just outside Maiduguri town in Borno, a few locals agreed to talk to HumAngle on the condition that their identities would be concealed. Villagers say these defectors incite violence, rob civilians, and harass women. When they complain or try to fight back, they brag about having ruled the forest for years and having the power to do whatever they want within the civilian communities. Displaced people also live side by side at the Shuwari IDP camp with men they believe are responsible for their displacement. Living with them at the camp comes with fear and mistrust, IDPs say.

When Salihu Garba briefly returned to Bama, following the Borno state resettlement programme, threats from former Boko Haram fighters forced him back to the Shuwari IDP camp, he says. While some defectors seem to be living without fighting their neighbours, others, especially those working as assets for the military, move around brandishing rifles, spurring terror, and instilling fear among locals. Simple communal disputes often degenerate into violence. Salihu tells HumAngle that, two months ago, a quarrel spiralled into stabbing a villager. A former insurgent had stepped on bricks laid by a villager to build part of his compound, and that escalated into an exchange of blows and domestic weapons. Both the civilian and the defector were arrested, but the latter returned the next day to stab the former, who was later rushed to the hospital to fight for his life.

Rural criminality also adds to the tension that comes with forcibly reintegrating terrorists into civilian communities, locals say. One repentant terrorist was recently arrested for theft after breaking into shops and stealing six bags of beans. Before being sent to the police cell and later prison, he threatened the shop owner: “I will return and kill you after serving my term.”

For Isah Kamsulum, another resident of Shuwari, the fear is deeply personal. In 2015, he witnessed a man named Ba’ana slaughter fifteen people in Bama. Years later, Ba’ana resurfaced as a repentant, working with soldiers in the community. Isah’s nephew confronted him, enraged that someone who had killed his sibling now lived comfortably among them. Ba’ana killed the nephew. He was arrested, held briefly, then released. Today, he fights alongside the military in Gamboru. Residents say they were never consulted before repentants were resettled among them. “We just saw them,” he complains. “The government brought them out of the forest and kept us here, too. We are all under their control.”

Ibrahim Adam of the Zajeri community in the state says he had an even more concerning experience. Over a year ago, about ten former insurgents got an apartment for themselves within the community. They were at first unarmed, but some of their friends, who worked as auxiliary fighters with the military and were armed, would frequently come visiting them daily. Their presence, especially in large numbers, unsettled the villagers. The former insurgents started asking young women to marry them. One divorcee selling food by the roadside was told she must marry one of them. Scared to the bone, the woman abandoned her trade and fled the area.

Villagers say they have grown alarmed living with the repentants, with Ibrahim recounting that they have witnessed about 30 of them crammed in an apartment, talking recklessly and loudly about their past and bragging about their atrocities before surrendering to the army. The community demanded their eviction, but the landlord refused because he’s afraid. While older repentants in the community maintain some decorum, the younger ones, accompanied by armed companions, remain a source of fear.

For Goni, Ali, and several terrorist deserters HumAngle interviewed, relapsing into terror is not an option. They also said they’re not among the young repentants instilling fears into the civilian community. They say they’ve chosen the path of peace and would never return to a life of violence.

GEMMA Collins spent years convincing the world she was living her best diva life – but behind the designer handbags and larger-than-life personality, there was a time when the empire she had worked so hard to build started crumbling around her.

Incredibly, the GC pulled herself back from the brink and banked more than £1.4 million last year. But friends say the feat would have been nearly impossible without the help of one very special man.

Those closest to Gemma have revealed the secret to the Romford-born star’s success is her dad, Alan, who is credited as the only person who can keep Gemma grounded.

A source tells us: “People see Gemma as this unstoppable force of nature, but behind the scenes, Alan has always been her rock.

“When things got difficult financially, he stepped in and took control.

“Gemma trusts him completely. There aren’t many people she would hand that responsibility to.”

For years, Gemma has openly admitted that Alan is effectively the gatekeeper to her fortune.

In one interview, she confessed: “My dad controls all my money. Seriously, I have to ask him if I want to upgrade my car.”

It’s a remarkable admission for a woman who has built a reported £4million fortune and can command up to £75,000 for a single sponsored Instagram post.

But those who know the family say it perfectly sums up their relationship.

Another source tells us: “Alan has always kept Gemma grounded.

“She’s the star, but he’s the sensible head behind the scenes.

“When she gets excited about a new project, he’s often the person asking the difficult questions.”

The latest figures suggest that the approach is paying off.

Accounts for her personal brand, Gemma Collins Ltd, show the company landed profits of around £1.4 million last year.

For fans who remember the financial turmoil of previous years, this is a huge turnaround.

Back in 2017, Gemma Collins Boutique Ltd was forced into liquidation owing around £88,000 to creditors.

The problems continued when she was disqualified from acting as a company director for three years in 2020 after repeatedly failing to meet VAT return deadlines, with HMRC pursuing claims worth more than £71,000.

A separate clothing business was later voluntarily dissolved, while her cosmetics venture, GemmaCollagen Ltd, survived for just a matter of months before disappearing altogether.

One insider tells us: “There was a period where it felt like every business venture came with a headache.

“Gemma never stopped working, but there were definitely lessons learned.

“That’s when Alan became more involved.”

It is perhaps fitting that Gemma’s biggest supporter is also somebody who understands business himself.

Alan built a successful career in shipping and has long been regarded as one of the most influential figures in his daughter’s life.

Fans caught a glimpse of their bond on her reality shows, where Alan frequently offered advice, not just about money but about life itself.

During one emotional conversation about her turbulent romance with James Argent, he told her: “You’ve just got to find some stability in your life when you find the right person.

“As much as we all like Arg, you’ve got to decide if he’s the right person.”

He later added: “For my daughter, I want somebody who’s top dollar.”

Those close to the family say that attitude explains exactly why Gemma places so much trust in him.

One source tells us: “Alan isn’t interested in celebrity.

“He cares about Gemma being secure and looked after. That’s always been his focus.”

Their relationship has only strengthened in recent years.

Gemma has spoken emotionally about her father’s devastating battle with Covid in 2020, when he spent weeks fighting for his life in intensive care.

She has also supported both Alan and mum Joan through a series of serious health scares, including Joan’s breast cancer diagnosis and terrifying hospitalisation last year after she stopped breathing.

The ordeal brought the family even closer together.

These days, Alan and Joan live with Gemma in her £1.3 million Essex home alongside fiancé Rami.

Speaking previously, Gemma said: “They live with me now. They’ve moved into my home, so we’re like one big Irish family.”

And remarkably, there appears to be very little tension under the roof.

Previously speaking to The Sun, Gemma explained: “Rami was absolutely fine with it.

“He loves my parents. They get on really well.

“You’ve got to remember, Rami has been in my family for nearly 15 years.”

The happy family dynamic comes as Gemma prepares for what insiders believe could be one of the biggest chapters of her career.

Later this year, she will return to screens with a new Sky reality series, Four Weddings and a Baby, which follows her wedding plans with Rami and her hopes of starting a family.

One insider tells us: “This show is incredibly important to Gemma because it’s the most personal thing she’s ever done.

“People know The GC, but this is about the woman behind the character.

“She’s genuinely in a really happy place.”

And for Gemma, that happiness feels hard-earned.

Perhaps that’s why those closest to her believe the latest financial success means far more than a healthy bank balance.

It’s proof that after all the setbacks, Gemma Collins is finally enjoying the stability she spent years chasing.

And standing beside her through every twist and turn has been the same man all along.

ZOE Ball has opened up about having an empty nest at home, after her daughter Nelly, 16, moved out to live with her dad, Fatboy Slim, full time.

The former Radio 2 DJ, 55, who recently lost out on the Strictly Come Dancing hosting job, is now living in a “quieter” house with her boyfriend.

Mum-of-two Zoe shares both Nelly, and son Woody, 25, with her ex-husband, Norman Cook, 62.

But, the presenter has revealed how her house is now “so quiet” after both of her children had moved out, as her son now lives in Bristol.

Speaking to Jo Whiley, 60, on their Dig It podcast, Zoe reflected on how empty her Brighton home was, in comparison to her co-host’s busy house.

“Mine’s so quiet, it’s like ugh! It’s less and less because Nel is based more at her dad’s now because I think she’s got to that point of, ‘Ah can I just be in one place?’” the star said.

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“All of her CSI revision notes are on the wall at her dads and it’s just [nice] not having to move from house to house, so she’s just spending more time there now.”

Zoe then revealed how Nelly was not far away, as Norman lived closed by.

“It’s great because it’s only around the corner and I can nip round at any time, which is great, and she can come here if she gets upset about anything like, ‘Mum, I need you’ but it’s less and less,” she said.

But Zoe isn’t on her own in her big house, as she moved her boyfriend Mathieu Weekes, 49, into the family home earlier this year.

The couple have been dating for a year now, with the pair completely smitten with each other.

Speaking about being a single mum and dating, Zoe previously told her podcast: “Introducing new partners, it’s a tricky one.

“You just have to go with the feeling of it. I think it’s okay to have a bit of a private life that isn’t part of the kids’ life for a little bit.

“In the past I’ve rushed that by welcoming someone in and being like ‘here’s my kids. Here’s my life. This is me.’

“And it’s all a bit much. It’s all a bit much for me. It’s all a bit much for the kids.

“Hopefully at some point there is someone where you think actually this person’s pretty cool and they’re pretty laid-back and they’re not going to come in and demand to be part of your kids’ lives.”

Meanwhile, this latest revelation comes just days after Zoe opened up to The Sun about how she REALLY feels about not getting the plum Strictly hosting job.

The star was beaten to the role by comedian Josh Widdicombe, 43, presenter Emma Willis, 50, and dance pro Johannes Radebe, 39.

The trio take over from Claudia Winkleman, 53, and Tess Daly, 57, who stepped down last year.

Zoe told The Sun: “I screen tested with Josh and he is hilarious. He is going to be so good.

“Emma is just gorgeous and I love Johannes, so they are going to ace it.

“And I don’t have to have a facelift, so I’m quite happy.”

Zoe also sent her congratulations to the trio, and thinks they will give the series a boost.

She said: “I have messaged Emma, Josh and Johannes — they are going to be brilliant.

“You know what? It needed fresh energy, and you can totally see why that’s happening.

“It’s like, move forwards, and that is great.”