By Obi Nwakanma

Anybody who is still in doubt about the intentions of Boko to disorganize and take possession of the federal government must observe the pattern of escalation of their insurgency.

Boko  Haram has grown from a low grade insurgency to a full scale civil war. Its method is guerrilla, and it is creating multiple fronts, and harassing the federal government of Nigeria; weakening and subduing its authority, and weakening its capacity with mosquito sting attacks.

It’s a brilliant military strategy and the tacticians of this operation learnt something apparently from the Biafran debacle. They are not about, until they establish full strength, which is not too far in the future, of launching a direct military action.

But given the increasingly inchoate response of the current administration to this threat to the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Boko Haram is winning. Events in the last three weeks bring me closer to the conviction that Nigeria is going to disappear into chaos at the current rate of attrition. Already all its institutions are decayed, weakened and vulnerable.

The president himself seems rather too lackadaisical, that’s the public image he presents; almost unconcerned about the fate or future of Nigeria; almost as if by not taking clear, strategic, and effective action, and invoking the full powers regnant to his office in dealing with this matter of Boko Haram and sundry insecurity, he has given up on Nigeria, and making it clear that he might wish Nigeria to be broken and dismantled across its historical Maginot. I think the president and his team is playing a dangerous game with the future of this country. The National Assembly is also profoundly disengaged.

It is almost as if parliament has gone on leave on this question of Nigeria’s national security, and the threat to its corporate and peaceful wholeness. By now, a joint emergency sitting of the National Assembly should been called, and from that, the parliament of the nation should have established the grounds for declaring a national emergency, and mandating the president with the authority to deal forcefully with this situation, which is no longer a threat, but which has assumed a situation of growing internal warfare.

In other words, it has become imperative to deal with Nigeria’s security situation by extraordinary means; by mobilizing all vital national security assets to the purpose of re-establishing full civic order and control of public safety. If the president is unable to accomplish this task, perhaps it is time for the national Assembly to impeach him for incompetence.

Nigerians hired him to do a job. He must earn his pay, or give way to a more competent person. He must develop a sound tactical capacity to manage what has clearly become a very fluid situation. And yes, it is task that might require both vertical and horizontal assets.

And I say what I’m going to say now, very conscious that there are numerous Nigerians like me, who still think military rule a terrible and unnecessary, even tragic intrusion to organized government. There are many Nigerians who wish that the military – The Army, the Navy and the Air force – stay as far away as possible from Nigeria’s public governance. But let me point to some facts: the military of every nation is established for a purpose.

There are two arms of state administration: the civil service with its administrative cadre and the military service with its high command. These are complementary institutions of national service. The civilian wing of state administration – that is, the civil service – runs the state only when there is calm, the rule of law, and legitimacy.

The Civil government loses its legitimacy and right to govern on two conditions (a) if it can no longer enjoy the support of a clear majority of citizens (b) if it is unable to maintain and guarantee through a properly organized civil policing system, the law of the land and the safety of the public.

In such a condition of threat to the sovereign order – that is to the peace and territorial integrity of Nigeria signaled by a collapse or the threat of the collapse of elected authority and the possibility of sustained internal violence which the organized police system is no longer able to control – such a moment warrants the legitimate intervention of the organized Armed services of the state.

The Military Act under the constitution of the Republic mandates the Armed Forces of Nigeria to defend the sovereignty and its territorial integrity of the nation. That is a role mandated by law. Boko Haram is a threat to the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

While I do not wish for military intervention, I want to draw the attention of the public and the attention of the president to the fact that the continued siege and rapid breakdown of civil authority is offering the Armed Forces of Nigeria legitimate grounds to intervene. The president and the national assembly are showing listlessness that paints them as unprepared and at their wits end on the continued terror of Boko Haram and other small insurgencies. There are indeed too many insurgencies in Nigeria.

In the early hours of Friday, assassins executed the Principal Secretary to the Adams Oshiomole, governor of Edo state. They just went to his home and shot him. The governor himself had declared that he is the target of an assassination plot against an elected official in which three journalists died. This is a scary development.

In the past week, Boko haram has bombed and threatened openly in clear dare and defiance of the federal government, to bomb more media houses and kill more journalists. Its bombing of the church at Bayero University, Kano, is a new scotched-earth tactics.

The National Security adviser, General Azazi in a very breathtaking security estimate situated the insurgencies to the PDP and its internal politics. At the birthday celebrations for Mr. Ndah, publisher of the Daily Trust, former Minister Defence and former Chair of President Jonathan’s Presidential Advisory, General T.Y. Danjuma declared, “Nigeria is on Fire,” and at the same event, Professor Ango Abdullahi declared that Nigeria was Lugard’s mistake and must be dismantled.

It would make many of us sad to dismantle Nigeria, but the increasing question on the soul for most Nigerians today is, should Nigeria remain a single country? Or should we break it up to have peace? Will breaking up Nigeria solve the current internal problems of violent insurgency or is there something to be learned from Sudan? Is there any future for Nigeria or are we too separate and different as a people to co-exist? Does the answer lie with the president or with the Armed Forces? I suspect we’ll find out soon enough.