The resurgence of Boko Haram coincides with disenchantment in the Muslim north with the election of a Jonathan, a southern Christian, who became president after illness killed his predecessor, a Muslim northerner. In the peculiar tradition of Nigerian presidential politics, in which the office traditionally alternates between the country's two religions, the election victory earlier this year should have gone to a Muslim. Instead of stepping aside, however, Jonathan chose to run for a full term of office, and his victory this spring fueled greater regional tensions of which the violence by Boko Haram is only a piece.

The government's militarized, violent reaction against Boko Haram might seem understandable. The group after all specializes in murdering Nigerian policemen stationed in the northeast of the country. Yet this hardliner reaction contrasts sharply with the government's more restrained response to a Christian-led insurgency in the Niger Delta, which targeted Western oil companies operating in southern Nigeria and the violence of which peaked a few years ago.

The oil rebellion was led by youths from Jonathan's own ethnic group, the Ija, whose grievances centered around the theft of oil revenues by the government and the failure to share oil wealth with the many different ethnic groups of the Delta, of which the Ijaw is the largest. Rather than use counter-insurgency tactics against the fighters, the Nigerian government, first under Jonathan's predecessor and then under him, promoted dialogue and amnesty to those who stopped attacking oil companies and laid down their arms.

The tactics worked. Unrest in the Niger Delta has retreated. Could the same formula be used to rob support in the north for Boko Haram?

The question should sit at the center of any international response to Nigeria's crisis. Muslim-Christian relations are not rosy anywhere, but in Nigeria the barometer of ecumenical health is critical to the fate of the nation. Nigeria is the only sizeable nation in the world -- with a population estimated at roughly 150 million, or one in every six sub-Saharan Africans -- where Christians and Muslims are about evenly split.

Muslim grievances, while often exaggerated here, are not imagined. Nigeria's oil sits entirely in the Christian-dominated south. Southerners also dominate the civil service, partly because of their relatively higher levels of education. Even the Nigerian Diaspora -- at least one million Nigerian-born people, including many of the country's best trained doctors, scientists, accountants, and teachers live in the U.S., Britain and Canada -- is largely Christian. The best-known Nigerian writers tend to be Christian: Chimamanda Adiche, Chinua Achebe, the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Nobel laureate Wole Soynika. Nigeria's burgeoning "Nollywood" movie industry is also dominated by Southerners, notably the traditionally Catholic Igbo ethnic group.