Independence Newspaper Saturday April 4, 2026
There is a point where tragedy outpaces grief and settles into a cold, hollow amnesia. Nigeria has passed that point years ago. We are no longer a nation in mourning; we are a nation in a trance, watching a slow-motion demolition of the human soul.
The slaughterings and displacements across our landscape have transcended madness, they have become a mundane backdrop to our daily existence.
What is perhaps more heinous than the blade of the terrorist or the bullet of the “government-aided” bandit is the clinical, soulless way we now discuss the carnage. Open any newspaper or scroll through any social media feed, and you will see the dehumanization of the Nigerian victim. We no longer see a mother, a dreamer, or a child. We see a digit. We see a tribe. We see a “Christian” from Southern Kaduna or a “Muslim” from Katsina.
We strip the dead of their humanity before their bodies are even cold, sorting them into political silos to determine if their deaths are worth our collective outrage or our cynical silence.
Nigeria’s map is no longer defined by its rivers and mountains, but by the depth of its mass graves. The security architecture has not just failed; it has folded into a posture of nonchalant policing that borders on complicity.
The Benue and Plateau Abbatoirs: In the lush valleys of Benue and the cool heights of Jos, the soil is perpetually damp, not with rain, but with the blood of agrarian communities.
Here, we call these “clashes,” a word that sanitizes the predatory erasure of an entire lineage. When hundreds are butchered in a single night in places like Barkin Ladi or Guma, the government’s reaction is a rehearsed script of “condolences,” When Nigerians are hacked to death in their sleep, the government response is often a shrug of the shoulders and a “press statement” echoing hollow platitudes.
The Northern Kilns: In Kaduna, Katsina, and Niger, the night is a predator. Bandits have evolved into a parallel government, more efficient at tax collection through kidnapping than the state is at providing electricity. The North has become a cauldron of fire. In Kaduna, the silence of the night is broken by the roar of motorcycles carrying the harbingers of death. In Katsina and Niger, entire local governments have been ceded to bandits who tax the living and execute the poor. People are kidnapped from their beds and classrooms, while leaders retreat behind the high walls in Abuja, sipping tea bought with the taxes of the terrified.
The Southern Breach: From the Owo church massacre in Ondo to the unknown gunmen stalking the Southeast, the message is clear: there is no sanctuary. The state has abdicated its monopoly on violence, subcontracting death to anyone with an AK-47. The shadow of death has stretched even to the serene groves of the Southwest. A jagged scar, but a conscious reminder that no sanctuary is holy enough to deter the devils in human skin that now roam our land.
The casualty analysis is staggering, yet it fails to move the needle of state policy. Thousands are dead, tens of thousands are in IDP camps, which are little more than holding pens for the forgotten and millions live in a state of perpetual “pre-death.”
We must be blunt, Nigeria is currently being presided over by a political class that has traded its conscience for the spoils of a dying empire. There is a specific kind of evil required to watch your citizens being butchered and respond only with a calculated assessment of how it affects your next election cycle.
Our leaders have become more deadly than the theological Satan; at least the devil is honest about his malice. Our leaders wear the embroidery of “excellencies” and “honorables” while presiding over a necropolis. They have turned the machinery of the state into a tool for wealth accumulation and greed, treating the lives of Nigerians as disposable pawns in a high-stakes game of power.
When a government prioritizes the comfort of the “loyal” over the survival of the “citizen,” it ceases to be a government. It becomes a cartel.
When the cries of victims in the North are ignored by the South, and the screams of the South are mocked by the North, the bandits have already won. They have not only killed our bodies; they have murdered our empathy.
We wake up to screams, and by lunchtime, we are debating the victim’s ethnic origin or religious belief.
We live in a society where the screams of the dying are treated as background noise, like the hum of a faulty generator. We have become an amnesiac congregation, forgetting the massacre of yesterday because the slaughter of today is more “trending.”
This amnesia is our greatest shame. We have forgotten how to be human. We have accepted a reality where life is the cheapest commodity in the market.
Nigeria currently has no leaderships; but satanists. These are not leaders; they are a family of, *Necrocracy”—a government of the dead, by the dead, for the enrichment of the deadly.
They have become more proficient at funeral arrangements than at nation-building.
The security forces, often under-equipped or misdirected, appear more adept at harassing peaceful protesters in the cities than confronting the marauders in the forests. This is not incompetence; it is a choice. It is a choice to allow the chaos to persist because, in the fog of war and the haze of blood, it is easier to steal, easier to control, and easier to rule impunitively.
We are being governed by those who would rather rule a graveyard than serve a living nation. If we do not find our humanity soon, there will be nothing left to bury but the silence of a disappeared people… Just as we ponder, don’t forget that I come in PEACE.
Dr. Sunny Oby Maduka (DSM), is an Author, Resource Personality, Management Consultant/ Trainer, Chartered/Certified – A u d i t o r / A c c o u n t a n t , Financial Compliance Expert, Economic/Political Analyst Strategist, Marine Expert and Motivationist)
