The Nigerian state is caught in the crossfire of national insecurity arising from the
insurgency of various rogue groups. The most prominent of these groups, and one whose
activities have had far-reaching destabilising effect on the polity, is the Boko Haram sect.
The Boko Haram sect, which uses the Taliban- and al-Qaeda-style terrorist tactics of suicide
bombing and targeted assassination, is responsible for between 3000 and 4000 deaths since
it declared war and engaged in armed insurgency in 2009. The sect has targeted and bombed
state institutions, the United Nations building as well as many Christian worship centres in
furtherance of its avowed objective of deploying terror to achieve the islamisation of the
Nigerian state. Relying on secondary sources of data, the paper interrogates the force theory
that underpins Nigeria’s security engineering and contends that the continued insecurity in
the polity is a demonstration of its ineffectiveness. The paper also contends that the
proposition by the Federal Government to grant amnesty to the Boko Haram sect is not as
simplistic as it appears as it transcends the narrow definitional criteria of bartering
forgiveness for peace. While the paper is critical of the proposed amnesty programme, it
advocates a holistic approach that incorporates other issues that are promotive of justice,
morality and ethicalness in the polity.