By John Amoda
PINI Jason titled his piece on his Tuesday Column “Jaw Jaw or War War”. The conflict resolution as phrased offer diplomatic options to parties in conflict before conflict escalates into war or in the course of war itself. The before option addresses the need to manage present conflicts to prevent their escalation into state of war.

Do we seek a negotiated resolution of the dangerously escalating conflict or do we drift into ruinous war because of poor management of the course of conflicts?

This is the jaw-jaw option. Or do we abandon talking and seek the resolution of the conflict through war? In UN parlance do we seek a political resolution of the conflict or do we seek a resolution of the conflict through the defeat of the enemy by war?

Neither of these two conflict management scenarios apply to the present Boko Haram war against the Nigerian government. Media discussions of this war have assumed the framework of insurgency. This is a mis-categorisation of the Boko Haram’s relationship to the Nigerian government.

The dictionary defines the insurgent person or group, as one who rises in opposition to governmental or political authority; one who rises in revolt to lead an uprising or an insurrection. Insurgency is technically a measure of insubordination, an escalation of protest against a remediable wrong.

The Boko Haram sect is not an insurgent group because they do not seek to reform the government or the society under the authority of the Federal Government. The sect seeks to establish in Nigeria a theocratic government under the Sharia system of governance; they seek to replace the secular constitutional government with an exclusivist religious rule imposed by force of arms on Nigerians.

Boko Haram thus defined is a revolutionary party seeking the overthrow of the order of government and of its economy. It is, therefore, not a terrorist group using the means of terror as protest measures. It is not a militant group using violence to pressure government into making decisions that “mere talk” had not effected.

The comparison of Boko Haram to the Niger Delta military, a reformist movement on the whole is, when not mischievous a dangerous mistake. The Boko Haram sect is a revolutionary party mobilized to institute a Boko Haram state, government and society by a revolutionary overthrow of Nigeria as presently constituted and governed.

The Boko Haram attack on government and the Nigerian society is not a “threat to the peace”, or a breach of the peace” instituted, protected and secured by the Nigerian government; the attacks are acts of aggression against the Nigerian government and the Nigerian society. The strategy of Boko Haram and its tactics of warfare should be understood in terms of the goals of the group.

External labels of the group as a militant pressure group or a terroristic group mobilizing for a movement of change, national or international in scope, does not alter the aims and goals of Boko Haram. The Boko Haram sect has revealed one thing, namely, that the government’s armed and security forces are not forces of the Nigerian state, but institutions of the Constitution. This distinction is not trivial. The Boko Haram sect must institute a state to secure an order of rule.

The state is thus both a context of order and the institutionalization of the order that provides the security for the governments to be able to govern. The character of the state is the character of the political party that institutes the state through establishing its monopoly of possession of force and of its use to establish its domination in the political process.

The institutions of the Federal Government and of the Security forces are not created by a group whose interest in dominion are implemented and defended by the constitution the group prescribes. They are set forth in the 1999 Constitution by a process that has been diametrically different from the revolutionary process through which states are formed. The Nigerian military is not a military created both as an instrument of and in the course of state making.

The military is supposed to be loyal to its constitutionally prescribed role; it has the option to be loyal. Not so for the armed forces created by a party in the process of establishing its sovereignty through the state. The Boko Haram has set out to overthrow the Nigerian government through war.

It can only do so through the defeat and disbanding of the constitutionally prescribed military. Its armed forces are thus first instruments of state creation; then instruments of pacification; finally they are instruments of defence, national and international.

These are the three phases of revolutionary conquest of power by a party and such is the Boko Haram. In the present war, the first in which the Nigerian government is attacked by an internal revolutionary aggressor, there is no party or state making in charge to direct the defence of the order its state secures. Government expects the military to defeat the Boko Haram sect. Government defines the crisis in terms of threat or breach of the peace. It does not see itself as the enemy that the Boko Haram sees it to be.

And those who call for dialogue with the sect continue to see the Boko Haram as an insurgent group and are surprised when the Boko Haram by its conduct shows itself to be a party involved in a revolutionary campaign. Let us be clear that it is the aim, the purpose, the plan of a party that defines it as reformist, secessionist or revolutionary. The Boko Haram sect are not interested in reforming the present system of order; they are not interested in carving out a dominion out of the present Nigerian society. Their interest in instituting a Sharia order, a Sharia state in Nigeria can only be effected by a revolutionary overthrow of the Nigerian secular constitutional order. We must forget stereotypes. The template for the Boko Haram is to be found in Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nigeria is under siege. The earlier the PDP wakes up and reassesses its interest in power, the better its chances of directing its government for victory in this war.