Nigeria, Nov. 9 -- A government can spend billions rebuilding a territory and still fail to restore its authority.

It can construct local government offices, rehabilitate schools, establish health facilities and introduce formal systems of taxation. It can deploy officials, launch livelihood programmes and announce the return of normal administration.

Yet if residents cannot travel safely along the roads connecting these facilities, if public officials cannot perform their duties without intimidation, and if armed organisations retain the capacity to extract revenue or punish cooperation with the state, the visible structures of recovery may conceal a deeper institutional weakness.

The buildings may stand. The programmes may be funded....