NO, I haven’t been to Palestine. I haven’t walked through the open wounds of Congo.
But I have known the warmth of Sudan. I have walked through the soft, sunlit streets of Khartoum, wandered the lively, colourful markets of Bahri, smiled through the vibrant chaos of Libya’s roadside stalls, and watched everyday life with quiet admiration.
I have visited the glassware market with awe, watched children run freely, met locals whose generosity felt almost disarming people who welcomed you with tea, sweets, dates, laughter, and would never let you leave without a spritz of perfume or even a pampering Sudanese spa treatment. A neighbour willing to pick up your relatives from the airport at 1 a.m. without hesitation, simply so they wouldn’t endure the stress of a taxi.
That was the Sudan I knew.
Now what do I see? The images tell a different, heartbreaking story. Burnt Bahri market. Once-beautiful malls reduced to blackened skeletons. Families scattered across borders. Women and children running for their lives. Men forced to dig the very graves they will be buried in. Communities trapped in unending fear. From behind my screen, I now witness a nation collapsing under the crushing weight of war, an unsettling reminder of how quickly a country can descend into devastation.
I don’t know war, but I know what it looks like from a distance. And in recent months, that distance has begun to feel dangerously thin, closing in on us with frightening speed. My heart aches, and that ache inches closer to home.
I am beginning to fear that what swallowed Sudan, Palestine, Congo and Ukraine is slowly circling Nigeria.
Our country continues to reel from a cycle of mass abductions that has plagued us for more than a decade.
From Chibok to Dapchi schoolgirls.
Kankara.
Jangebe.
Kaduna.
Zamfara.
And now the mothers of Kebbi and Niger, who will sleep with burning chests for the rest of their lives.
The list grows.
The grief deepens.
And the questions remain painfully unanswered.
Communities are left to mourn, to beg, to hope. And yet, very little changes.
How did we get here? When did the abnormal become routine?
Is it because it’s not your niece this time? Not your daughter? Not your sister?
Is that why our outrage dies after 48 or 72 hours?
Every Nigerian today is living in a “God save us” reality. Parents send their children to school with unsettled hearts. Travellers whisper short prayers before entering vehicles. Entire regions have reshaped their existence around insecurity—as though terror is now a natural part of our national identity.
We are bleeding quietly, hiding our fear in our throats, pretending everything is normal because what other choice do we have?
The truth is more heartbreaking than the headlines:
We are losing people.
We are losing peace.
We are losing our country piece by piece.
But what we must never accept is the lazy, dangerous narrative that this is a religious war.
Have you seen these men? Have you looked into their eyes? They do not look like Nigerians. Nothing in their faces reflects belief, conscience, or humanity. Their actions contradict every moral, cultural, or spiritual principle. Their violence is indiscriminate—rooted not in faith, but in lawlessness, greed, power, and profit.
These are not people fighting for God.
These are men without God.
Religion has nothing to do with this carnage.
Behind every abduction headline is a family whose life has been permanently ruptured.
The pain in Dapchi is not theirs alone.
The agony in Jangebe is not theirs alone.
The horror in Kebbi is not theirs alone.
The fear in Niger is not theirs alone.
It is ours.
All of ours.
These daughters are not statistics; they are children with dreams, with names, with faces, with futures that should never have been interrupted.
Imagine your sister, the one you would protect with everything in you.
Your daughter.
Your niece.
Imagine her being dragged into the night.
You don’t want to imagine it. None of us do. It is too terrifying.
God forbid it ever happens to your family or mine.
But those families are not imagining it.
They are living it.
At this point, everything in this country should be put on pause until the insecurity crisis is treated as the national emergency it truly is. We live with knots in our chests, counting kidnapped schoolgirls like we are counting seasons.
We are tired of hashtags.
Tired of statements.
Tired of committees, conferences, press releases, and rehearsed grammar.
We want action.
We want safety.
The silence from those in power is louder than the gunshots echoing across the North. They tell us, “Security has been deployed.” Is that so? Where? To what effect? We see no urgency, no discomfort, no trembling. Nothing.
And that is what terrifies me the most.
Because war is business and someone, somewhere, is profiting from this chaos.
They are positioning Nigeria for war because wars have casualties, but they also have beneficiaries. And I fear that the beneficiaries are sitting comfortably in power, hence the paralysis.
The Nigerian government has failed us. Not APC. Not PDP. The entire political class. It is a collective failure, a tragic accumulation of neglect, denial, corruption, and indifference converging into a national tragedy.
While we fight wars within our borders, they are busy stoking another from outside, sending troops to die oh, have you seen the circulating clip of an Army Brigadier shot dead?—playing chess with our lives.
Dearest Nigerian Government, we are not asking for much.
All we ask for are peaceful communities.
A roof over our heads.
Food.
Health care.
Education.
The bare minimum.
A country where children can go to school without disappearing.
Let us rewrite the narrative.
Let us keep our young girls safe.
Let us keep them alive.
Before Nigeria becomes another country we speak of with past-tense pity.
Remember: bombs and missiles have no loyalty, they respect neither tribe nor religion. Stray bullets do not differentiate between the elite and the ordinary. If we continue on this path, we are all going under, and there will be no country left for anyone to govern.
If we continue this trajectory, we risk becoming another cautionary tale—a nation spoken about in the past tense, the way we now speak of countries destroyed by conflicts that began with small, ignored warnings.
We must confront this crisis with honesty and urgency.
We must protect our young girls.
We must safeguard our communities.
We must refuse to accept insecurity as our destiny.
Before Nigeria reaches a point where the distance between us and war disappears entirely.
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.