Nigeria, April 1 -- For over a decade, Boko Haram has defied Nigeria's military campaigns, outlived shifting strategies, and adapted to successive waves of state response. The persistence of the insurgency is often misread as evidence of military inadequacy. Yet this interpretation is both convenient and incomplete. The deeper truth is more uncomfortable: Boko Haram endures not because Nigeria is incapable of defeating it, but because the conflict itself sits at the intersection of geographies, histories, and identities that Nigeria has never fully governed.

At the heart of this misdiagnosis lies a fundamental error of perspective. Boko Haram is routinely framed as a domestic security challenge, an internal rebellion to be subdued throu...