Relations between the Nigerian and US militaries have been strained with Nigeria cancelling training by US advisers of a unit that was supposed to fight the militants, who have captured towns and villages in the country’s northeast and vowed to create a hardline Islamic state.

Last week, in the face of demands that the world respond to the slaughter of civilians by Boko Haram the way it did after the killings of police and journalists at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo by jihadist extremists, Nigeria again rejected both UN and African Union intervention. It said West Africans can deal with Boko Haram, though the militants have continued killing with impunity.

The conflict has left more than 13,000 people dead and one million homeless. General David Rodriguez, head of US Africa Command, said the Islamists’ gains on the battlefield are cause for concern and “the number of people displaced is just staggering.” Rodriguez said the Nigerian military’s response “was not working very effectively and actually in some places made it worse.” He added: “I hope that they let us help more and more.”

Nigeria has the largest army in west Africa but has come under criticism at home and abroad for failing to stop the advance of Boko Haram. But does Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan know something the rest of us don’t? It seems, yes.

There is a popular view that unrest in the northeast improves the chances of Jonathan’s re-election. It is not unjustified.

As an insightful Brookings Institution paper by Jideofor Adibe noted: “The emergence of a viable opposition coincides with a period of great tension between north and south, arising from the decision of President Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2011 elections at the head of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a decision that has made many northerners feel cheated of their turn in producing the president and that induced some violence”.

The result of that election, as a stunning map of the outcome by Brookings shows, is that Jonathan didn’t win a plurality of the vote in any of the northern states, effectively cutting the country into two. Now with former general and president Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim and northerner, in the race at the head of a surging opposition All Progressive Congress (APC) ticket, and the grievance over insecurity, Jonathan is all definitely set to do even worse in the north. A recent Buhari rally in Kano in the north that can only be described as mammoth, is said to have spooked the Jonathan camp further.

The people in the northeast who are now not going to vote because of the insurgency, are therefore effectively votes for Jonathan.

However, Nigeria also today also displays a common problem in Africa. When a country is large - as DR Congo for example is - and insurgencies happen far away from the capital and commercial nerve centres (in Nigeria’s case Abuja and Lagos respectively), it can afford to ignore it. At 923,768 square kilometres (356,669 square miles), Nigeria’s is the 14th largest African country.

Thirdly, though, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, with nearly 180 million. I can shrug off Boko Haram killing 13,000 and displacing one million, in ways that small Sierra Leone with 6 million people and Liberia with 4 million couldn’t during their civil wars.

Thus the answer to what seems like the nonchalance of Abuja toward Boko Haram’s mayhem is an uncomfortable one - it can afford to, and its clever though deadly cynical electoral politics for Jonathan.