In response to both local and international reactions, expressing concerns about the recent killings of Christians in Nigeria by the Boko Haram terrorist group, President Muhammadu Buhari once again resorted to the comparison of casualty figures suffered by “both sides” in Nigeria’s lingering security challenge. Featured as a guest writer on the “Speaking Out” column of the Christianity Today magazine, one of America’s most influential evangelical periodicals, President Buhari wrote, “Indeed, it is the reality that some 90 per cent of all Boko Haram’s victims have been Muslims: they include a copycat abduction of over 100 Muslim schoolgirls along with their single Christian classmate; shootings inside mosques; and the murder of two prominent imams.”
This latest intervention from President Buhari follows a familiar pattern of reminding members of a grieving ethno-geographic or religious demography to take solace in the fact that the demography of their perceived adversaries has recorded higher numbers of deaths than they in the human slaughter slab that Nigeria has become. President Buhari made a similar comparison when he paid a condolence visit to Taraba State in May 2018, in the wake of the so-called farmers/herders’ clashes that claimed the lives of many. On that occasion, President Buhari told his grieving hosts that the predominantly Hausa/Fulani ethnic Zamfara State has recorded more deaths from the murderous activities of cross-border bandits than they and the people of Benue State have recorded from marauding killer herdsmen.
In each of these instances, President Buhari’s habitual comparison of human tragedy of numbers is an effort at living in denial of the gradual quaking of the Nigerian state along its ethno-geographic and religious fault lines. And by consistently living in denial of the obvious ethnic and religious underpinnings of Nigeria’s complicated security challenges,the President compels many to raise posers about his leadership style. For sure, the President owes it a national duty to decisively deal with two security challenges that are severely rocking the nation .His failure to do this thus far, especially with his security architecture dominated by his northern Muslim section of the country, impresses upon the rest of Nigeria a perception that President Buhari is uncaring in the face of worsening insecurity. Therefore, his claim that 90 per cent of the Boko Haram terrorists’ victims are Muslims lends itself to a debate. President Buhari’s claim is a lethargic response with potential of underestimating the mid-term strategic destabilisation objective of the terror group through an implosion of the Nigerian state induced by sectarian crisis. The pledge of allegiance by the Abubakar Shekau-led Boko Haram group to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), marked a turning point in the course of the insurgency. Its allegiance to ISIL required of Boko Haram to henceforth abide strictly by the Islamic rules of war 
engagement, which forbids the spilling of Muslim blood. To this end, the indiscriminate bombing of mosques, markets, city centres, sacking of towns and villages wherein a single Muslim casualty could be recorded is prohibited. The exceptions to this rule are Muslim members of Nigeria’s security forces, C-JTF volunteers, and local and international aid workers. It was the refusal of Abubakar Shekau to abide by this directive, as he would not recognise anyone as a Muslim except members of his sect, that resulted in a split in the ranks of Boko Haram.
Under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Barnawi, a splinter group of fighters who are willing to strictly abide by the Islamic rules of war, which forbids the killing of fellow Muslims, emerged under the banner of Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP). The emergence of ISWAP has since altered the equation in the theatre of war in favour of this well-trained and funded group of professional fighters as seen in their dare the devil attacks on hard targets of Nigeria’s security forces. Whereas, the Shekau faction of Boko Haram continuously attacks every soft target, irrespective of ethnicity or creed. However, its heavily diminished ranks of fighters has substantially reduced its lethal capabilities.
With its full incorporation into the international network of global jihadi terror groups, ISWAP has emerged a formidable fighting force with a military strategy that aims to decimate Nigeria’s security forces in the North-East theatre of war. Its strict adherence to the Islamic rules of war, which has seen it avoid killing of unarmed fellow Muslims, has greatly enhanced its legitimacy among some sections of the predominantly Muslim native population of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. President Buhari’s recounting of the abduction of the over 100 Dapchi Muslim schoolgirls and their “one” Christian counterpart to justify his “90 per cent” hypothesis is only half of the story. The other half of the story is that, whereas all the other Muslim girls were returned in line with their strict adherence to the Islamic rules of war engagement, Leah Sharibu, the lone Christian schoolgirl, remains in the captivity of ISWAP. As it turned out, the Dapchi schoolgirls’ abduction was a freak show staged by ISWAP to demonstrate their reformed modus operandi. The resurgence of the Boko Haram insurgency in recent times has been as a result of ISWAP’s operational strategy, which focuses on hard targets of Nigeria’s security forces, avoiding soft targets. This is has enriched its ranks with men and material resources with a corresponding dwindling cooperation from communities no longer feeling threatened by ISWAP to government forces.
Boko Haram is not Islamic but it is Muslim and its ultimate goal is to pull down Nigeria’s current secular constitutional democratic order and replace it with an Islamic state theocracy. Boko Haram is not Islamic because Islam is a divinely guided empire of faith and not a religion that can be confined to a physical geographic state under the guidance of self-appointed potentates.
And Boko Haram is said to be Muslim because the struggle for the establishment of an Islamic state theocracy is an aspiration that is shared by the mainstream Muslim community in Nigeria, having fallen under the doctrinal influence of radical Islamic theology as espoused by ancient empire builders to give religious sanction to their self-seeking worldly agenda.
To put it simply, Boko Haram insurgents are Muslims but their insurgency is not Islamic.
Having successfully distinguished itself as a jihadi group, non-aggressive to Muslims, ISWAP is set to plunge Nigeria into a full-scale sectarian war by now carrying out targeted killing of Muslims’ favourite foes, Christians. The now consistent pattern of abducting and publicly executing Christians by ISWAP is part of a strategy to lure the mainstream Muslim community in Nigeria into conflagrated sectarian crisis with its Christian brethren. A full-blown sectarian war between Muslim and Christian communities in Nigeria will weaken the Nigerian state, to the advantage of ISWAP, and enhance its chances of meeting its goal of an Islamic state over its spheres of influence. It is no coincidence that both the laity and clergy of the Christian community in Nigeria have come under serious attack by ISWAP. Already, the on-going but needless sparring between the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Buhari administration, on one hand, and between them and the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) on the other hand over church leaders’ recent protest of the killing of Christians, which has unfortunately degenerated into a headcount of death per denomination, reads like a plot from the playbook of ISWAP.
In the face of this unfolding reality, it will not serve the collective interest of Nigerians for President Buhari and the leadership of the Muslim community in Nigeria to continue to live in denial of ISWAP’s targeted killing of Christians. To avert this impending catastrophe is for President Buhari to quit his unhelpful platitudes and urgently initiate a process of national reconciliation towards absolute national unity. A nation at war with itself cannot defeat a common enemy such as ISWAP. This is the time for the Muslim community in Nigeria to demonstrate love, empathy, solidarity, understanding and support for their brethren Christian compatriots that have come under targeted killings by ISWAP.