YOU wake up, and you are hit with:
The wars brewing and happening. Fresh bandit attacks on innocent villagers, new video footage released by the same bandits torturing their victims. Religious and tribal wars on social media, Nigerian politicians discussing re-elections, and it’s not even mid-year.
Amid all this chaos, the real concern is us Nigerians: the North is bleeding. More villages are being attacked, another mosque stained with blood, and yet another press statement filled with “condemnations.” And then the usual cycle continues…
This is the North. This is Nigeria. And this is our new normal. Bandits move freely, kidnapping entire communities. Terrorists slaughter people in their homes and on their farms. Worshippers are killed while praying in the holy month inside mosques, at the very moment they are meant to feel safest. And yet the question that keeps screaming in our heads has no answer.
What exactly is the government doing? To God who made me, I want answers.
We are told to be patient: “Security forces are on top of the situation; investigations are ongoing.”
But the graves keep multiplying faster than the promises. How can armed groups overrun towns for hours, sometimes days, without resistance? How can killers attack, loot, kidnap, and disappear over and over again without consequence? How can worshippers be murdered during prayer, and the response be reduced to a few lines of sympathy?
Let’s be honest: if this was happening consistently in elite neighborhoods, it would not be treated like this. If those being killed were politically connected, something would change overnight. But rural communities? Poor farmers? Ordinary worshippers? Their lives seem to cost less.
Is this how we want to continue?
Will we keep counting bodies instead of fixing the system? Will we keep normalizing mass killings as “security challenges”?
Will we keep moving on until the next attack, until the next headline, until the next victims are you and me? Because let’s not lie to ourselves: violence does not respect distance. Today it’s “somewhere else.” Tomorrow it’s your road, your mosque, your children’s school, your family.
Every day on social media, we are forced to watch bandits parade their cruelty without shame videos you didn’t consent to seeing but can’t unsee once they flash past your screen. Pain packaged as content, suffering turned into updates, recording kidnapped victims, humiliating them, beating them, torturing them, broadcasting their pain to the world like entertainment.
And we are told these criminals cannot be tracked. Yet the same security system somehow finds the speed and precision to track down a student for a comment on X, or abduct a journalist from his home simply for speaking his mind. What kind of justice is this?
These victims are not faceless statistics; they are people with families, with futures that mattered before they were dragged into the forest. The guts, the sheer audacity, of these criminals is staggering. Before, they sent videos just to prove the victims were alive while demanding ransoms.
Now they boldly show the world how they torture innocent lives and demand ransoms so outrageous that if these people had such money, they would not be victims at all; they would be living comfortably among the elites, protected by influence and power. For years, we have been conditioned to accept seeing kidnapped faces on our screens.
Now they are trying to normalize torture. And if nothing stops this descent, I fear the next horror waiting to be normalized is rape, filmed and shared for the world to see. And when that happens, will we once again reduce human suffering to hashtags like #NorthIsBleeding or #BringBackOurGirls, trend for a few days, then move on while the blood dries and the killers grow bolder?
A government’s first duty is to protect lives. When people can no longer pray, farm, travel, or sleep without fear, that duty has failed. And failure this loud should not be met with silence; it should be met with accountability. We do not need more condolences or recycled speeches. We need action, urgency, and honesty.
If nothing changes, then the question is no longer, what is happening to the North?
The question becomes, who will be the next victim, and why should it not be you?
And now, with elections just months away, they will come with slogans, promises, and bags of rice. If you like, collect the rice, but know what you’re trading. Because every time you sell your vote for survival, you sell your dignity, and you renew the license of the same people who watched the North burn and did nothing.
Hunger may be temporary; hunger will pass. But congratulations in advance: you will have successfully renewed the contract of the people who watched the North bleed and called it governance, and the consequences of silence will last four more years.
Voice just cleared its throat.
- Kabara is a writer and public commentator. Her syndicated column, Voice, appears in News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday. She can be reached at hafceekay01@gmail.com.