Chidi Amuta A blistering urgency currently envelopes Nigeria.

It is an urgency of war, the clear and present danger of an imminent national meltdown.

It is a common truth that Nigeria is desperately embattled on all fronts.

It has been so for far too long.

Our leadership may not agree that we are at war.

But our perceptive citizens keen external observers know we are in serious trouble.

The Americans have advised their embassy staff to keep away from normal duties and avoid travelling to at least 26 of our 36 states.

Other missions have quietly taken similar steps.

I would not know what more defines a war situation than the mass casualties and treacherously risky atmosphere in most parts of the country.

On a daily basis, we are facing military challenges and confrontations of a form and intensity that literally qualify as warfare.

A callous enemy is lobbing grenades at everything at sight.

Strategic roads in Borno and other nearby states are littered with IEDs that frequently kill innocent people and combatants alike.

Well planned attacks are being carried out against our security forces.

Planned ambushes are laid daily on the routes of military and political leaders in the embattled states.

Our military is in full combat engagement with all the weapons of war – tanks, armoured personnel carriers, full combat air cover against an enemy that no longer hides its identity or intent.

Even worse, we are recording casualty levels that would make a formally declared war look like a joke.

Troops and civilians are daily being decimated on an industrial scale.

Forces deployed to engage insurgents in Borno and neighbouring states are no longer sure of the dividing line between the enemy and innocent citizens.

In the prevailing panic, friendly fire is claiming more innocent lives than fire directed at the enemy.

Of greater concern is the heavy toll that the counter insurgency engagement has recently taken among our senior military officers.

Otherwise well trained and highly valued officers in strategic combat roles are being taken out in attacks that look like sabotaged from inside.

Clearly, there is leaky intelligence all over the theatre of this undeclared war.

In the last fortnight, we have lost two generals and one colonel, that is an average of one dead general per week! Predictably, the political leadership has rolled out the usual messages of condolence to bereaved families.

We have reiterated our determination to wipe out the insurgents and end terrorism very soon.

It is the same empty boasts that the Nigerian state has reflexively issued over the last 12 years to no avail.

Over these years, the Nigerian state has treated combatant insurgents more like errant citizens than as combat adversaries.

Some arrests have been made.

After short periods of detention, those arrested have been released, granted state amnesty, rehabilitated with government allowances and dressed in government funded outfits only to rejoin the terror gangs once they run out of cash.

The ranks of terrorists and insurgents have grown just as their organizations have gotten stronger and more vicious.

That is how we got to this dangerous stage in an almost uncontrollable war.

Politically opportunistic arguments that equate Boko Haram and other insurgent combatants with what used to be Niger Delta Militants do not hold water.

Niger Delta militancy was fired by economic and ecological injustice in a region that has remained the life line of the Nigerian economy.

Therefore, state amnesty for the Niger Delta militants and their rehabilitation in sustainable livelihoods was a sensible development policy initiative and a drive towards equity and justice.

Once the policy was activated and institutionalized, the militancy died a natural death for the most parts.

With jihadist insurgents who have been engaged in over a decade long fundamentalist warfare against the Nigerian state, it is a different matter.

Jihadist insurgents and terrorists are declared enemies of the Nigerian and other states in the Sahel.

They have a creedal commitment that is adversarial to the existence of the Nigerian state.

In contrast to the secular essence of the Nigerian state, these fundamentalist terrorists have a sectarian religious commitment.

Their commitment is also territorial which makes them a dangerous secessionist movement.

They have sought to carve out swathes of Nigerian territory to form part of a caliphate.

This is no different from the madness of ISIS in parts of the Middle East and Europe in the post 9/11 Bin Ladin era.

Therefore, jihadist insurgents and militants in northern states of Nigeria cannot be regarded or treated as either misguided citizens or victims of economic, social or ecological injustice.

They may share the blight of poverty and deprivation with other underprivileged Nigerians.

But they are first and foremost adherents of a faith- based secessionist armed rebellion against the Nigerian state.

When captured in combat, therefore, these Boko Haram and other jihadist militants should be treated more like war prisoners, not just common terrorists or casual criminals.

They should be tried and punished under the best rules of the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war.

The wider Nigerian public is astonished that captured jihadist militants have so far hardly been prosecuted, convicted or punished.

The news is filled with stories of mass abductions of citizens from schools and places of worship by jihadist militants and other faith inspired squads of bandits and militants.

But frequently and almost as a rule, those abducted are released but there is hardly word on the arrest or prosecution of their captors.

Instead, a virtual industry of ransom for abductions is said to be thriving.

The proceeds are “re-invested” in new recruitments and arms purchases for further attacks.

The result is the present state of....