How have the mighty fallen!
How has a country once revered for its intellect, its leadership, its promise — fallen into the hands of selfish, visionless leaders?
How has a nation known for producing some of the best surgeons in the world become a place where world-class hospitals don’t exist?
How has the so-called giant of Africa become so dwarfed in global academia that no single Nigerian university ranks among the world’s top 1000?
This most populous Black nation has turned into a hunting ground, not just for bandits and herdsmen, but for politicians who now prey on the very people they swore to serve.
Each day, we mourn in Benue, Plateau, Enugu, and countless other states, casualties of unprovoked violence and mass displacement. Yet the silence from those in power thunders louder than the cries of the grieving.
This is not just negligence. It is “Incompetence enthroned.”
Worse still, the citizens themselves have been divided, balkanized by the political class that feeds off our differences. They wield religion and tribe as weapons, pitting neighbor against neighbor, north against south, Christian against Muslim, Igbo against Hausa, Yoruba against Ijaw, all while looting in unity.
Our education system? Collapsing. Not by mistake, but by design.
In the North, many are deliberately left uneducated, indoctrinated instead with extremist ideologies, robbed of the light of knowledge so they may remain pliable.
In the South, tribalism is institutionalized, masked as “respect,” but nurtured to keep people divided and docile. Even in the East, where one might assume immunity, ego festers: no man wants to be ruled by his brother.
This, all of it, is the Nigerian curse. Once, unrest was a thing of the North. Today, no region is spared. From the hills of Jos to the forests of Enugu, from Zamfara to Anambra, we now share one reality: fear.
And what of leadership? As General Sani Abacha once said, “Any insurgency that lasts more than 24 hours is sponsored by the government.”
Why then has this horror persisted for years? Why has the president not visited Benue? Not stood in Plateau? Not spoken to a nation in mourning? Is it silence, or complicity?
Your home may be safe today, but if this continues, tomorrow will come for you.
It is not enough to pray. Not enough to stay neutral. Every Nigerian, from religious leaders to students, from businessmen to schoolchildren, must rise and call out this failed government.
Your voice matters. Now. To be silent is to be complicit. To delay is to be guilty. Let it be said that when Nigeria was burning, you did not stand by with folded arms. Let posterity not curse your name for keeping quiet when your neighbors bled.
It is better, far better, to die for a cause, than to die in fear, or to live as prey in your own land.