Volume 1: 24/05/2026
By Dr. Jude Obasanmi Ph.D
The Nigerian State can no longer credibly deny complicity, whether by action, negligence, silence, or calculated inaction, in these coordinated, systematic and repeatedly executed attacks against innocent people.
What we are witnessing is no longer isolated violence. It bears the markings of orchestration, planning, protection and sustained failure of responsibility. A government that repeatedly fails to prevent mass killings, fails to prosecute perpetrators and fails to reassure its citizens inevitably raises grave questions about its role, intent, or indifference. As Martin Luther King Jr. warned: “ Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ”
In another enduring reflection on silence in the face of evil, King emphasized that: “ The greatest tragedy … was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people .”
Similarly, Edmund Burke famously warned: “ When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one .”
Today, many Nigerians increasingly feel abandoned by the very institutions sworn to protect them. Villages burn, communities are displaced, citizens live in fear and yet official responses remain weak, selective, reactive, delayed or politically sanitized. A nation that normalizes bloodshed risks losing not only lives, but its moral legitimacy.
If this trajectory continues unchecked as we can see, the long-term consequences will be devastating:
- The collapse of public trust in the Nigerian State and its institutions.
- Deepening ethnic, regional, and religious divisions.
- Rise of self-defense militias and widespread vigilantism.
- Economic decline as insecurity destroys farming, investment, and commerce.
- Mass displacement and humanitarian crises.
- Radicalization of frustrated youths who no longer believe in justice or democracy.
- International isolation and reputational damage.
- Eventual fragmentation of national unity and identity.
- And lots more.
Comrades, history has shown repeatedly that when governments fail to protect their citizens, citizens eventually stop believing in the nation itself. And that is the greatest danger before us. We have not merely been attacked. We are being conquered: psychologically, socially, economically, and territorially, while those entrusted with power continue to deny, decamp, deflect, or remain silent.
In God we trust.
Comr. Obasanmi Jude, PhD, is the Chief Responsibility Officer of Josemaria Escriva Foundation and Writes from Ekpoma, Edo State.
The opinion expressed in this article is entirely that of the writer and not that of Newscurve24.