LAGOS — Mine is a country of 175 million people, who speak more than 500 languages and are renowned for their inability to get along. Blame usually falls on colonial map makers, and it is well-deserved. But the reasons for our national discord are complex — certainly much too complicated for most of the international media to fathom — so news accounts of the multiple antipathies among our 250 ethnic groups are usually telescoped into what is known in the trade as boilerplate: the Muslim North battles the mostly Christian South for control of Nigeria’s oil wealth.

As a journalist, I know the difficulties of summarizing the world’s mad doings. Take the bewildering violence of Boko Haram. I’m as confused as anyone by the Islamic terrorist movement’s motivations, tactics and goals — perhaps because they themselves seem just as confused. In the beginning they were against southern Christians living in the north, and blew up churches to prove it. Now they’ve gone beyond attacking establishment figures to slaughtering their own people — even children — on the grounds that they are against Western education.

Though he won’t exactly admit it, our president, Goodluck Jonathan, shares this confusion, but — given the dignity of his office and the reality that elections are little over a year away — he apparently feels he must make a show of shoring up national unity. Thus, earlier this month, Mr. Jonathan inaugurated the Advisory Committee on National Conference/Dialogue. The name is unwieldy, the goals uncertain, and the chances of success dubious.

The fact is that our divisions are more nebulous than we Nigerians are sometimes inclined to admit. There are, for example, as many Muslims as Christians among the Yoruba people in the south. Still, it would be unfair to suggest that Nigerians, like people everywhere, don’t have stereotypes about our fellow countrymen.