-By Abdul Mahmud
Another week has opened in Nigeria with blood on the ground and fear in the air. The country wakes up each morning to new tragedies. Each day closes with fresh accounts of death, kidnappings, and retreats. Nigeria is living inside a vortex of violence. Nothing breaks it. Nothing interrupts it. The state has become pusillanimous, a timid spectator.
The abduction of more than twenty five girls from Government Girls Comprehensive Senior Secondary School, Maga, in Kebbi State, is another grim reminder of how far the security collapse has travelled. The killing of the Vice-Principal in the attacks showed the brutality of the terrorists. These were girls preparing for a future that is constantly denied them. In that region, the education of girls has long been contested by extremists and patriarchal norms. The state promised to protect these children. It failed. Again.
Across the north, the same story unfolds. In Tsafe Local Government Area of Zamfara State, entire families were taken. Women and children disappeared into forests controlled by terrorists. Homes were emptied without resistance. Communities now live under criminal rule. Citizens whisper not to provoke those who control their roads, markets, and farmlands. The state is absent. In the north east, the shock is deeper. The reported capture and killing of General Muhammed Uba, who the Army High Command assured the country was safe within his battalion, has shaken the country. A General of the Nigerian Army. Seized. Dragged away. Made to sit on the ground by his snatchers. Killed by terrorists who move on motorcycles. A military built on decades of training and investment was breached by a band that holds no formal command structure. It is shameful. It undermines morale. It raises a painful question. Is the Nigerian military still capable of fighting?
Everywhere Nigerians turn, the failures of the state stare back at them. The military is stretched. The police is overwhelmed. Intelligence gathering is weak. Communities report danger and no one comes. Criminals move from state to state. Terrorists set up camps. They impose taxes. They administer their own justice. The state protects no one. It barely protects itself. The government keeps promising a turning point. Instead, we watch a point that turns in on itself, spinning without direction, circling like the widening gyre of WB Yeats’s The Second Coming. The turning point never arrives. Operations are launched with loud declarations of victory. The terrorists regroup. They reorganise. Villages burn. Schools fall. Families mourn. The cycle continues.
Our country has normalised tragedy. Nigerians now expect bad news. They wait for the next report of abductions. They wait to hear which community has fallen. Prophet Amos once asked, “When will the new moon be over, so we can sell our corn?” It was a lament about a society rotting from inside. It was an indictment of leaders who worshipped power but abandoned justice. Nigeria carries that lament today. Nigerians now ask when this cycle of death will end. They now ask when the government will act with urgency. They now ask when rulers will remember that the first duty of the state is protection. Instead of answers, Nigerians see a president who governs from behind high walls. The fortress of Aso Rock grows more secure while the rest of the country grows more vulnerable. Terrorists move freely. Terrorists spread across territories untouched by government authority. Villages have no police presence. Cities shrink into islands of guarded estates. Nigerians travel only by daylight. Even then, they travel in fear.
Nigeria cannot continue this way. Our country cannot survive when its armed forces appear unsure of their own strengths. The military once carried the weight of national pride. It was the symbol of unity. It was the institution that projected the authority of the federal government. Today, Nigerians ask if it is still primed for battle. They ask how a General can be captured. They ask why battalions retreat. They ask why weapons fall into the hands of those who seek to destroy the republic.
These questions are fair. They must be asked.
The military needs honest scrutiny. This government needs accountability. Nigerians deserve truth. If the armed forces are under-resourced, Nigerians need to know. If corruption has weakened capacity, the offenders must be punished. If political interference has crippled operations, it must be exposed. The attitude of silence, denial, and deflection is no longer acceptable.
Nigeria and Nigerians are now trapped between the rock and the hard place. Some cling to patriotism, patience, and faith in the government’s ability to defeat the terrorists, mocking any notion of foreign assistance. Others insist that the country must seek help from beyond its borders. When President Donald Trump promised that he would send troops to our country to wipe out terrorists wherever they found them, Nigerians wondered what such intervention would mean here. They now ask when he intends to send help, since their own President cannot secure the country. It is a question born out of despair. A question rooted in frustration with a state that has abandoned its duties.
The despair is not only in the number of dead. It is in the absence of hope. A country loses part of its soul when children are stolen from classrooms. A country loses its dignity when Generals are captured. A country loses its direction when leaders stay silent or offer empty speeches. Nigeria is losing too much. The new week has already brought more deaths. More abductions. The next week may bring the same. Nigerians pray it does not. Nigerians ask for a leadership that understands the urgency of the moment. They ask for a military that fights back. They ask for a police force that responds. They ask for a country that feels like a country.
Nigeria must reclaim its security. It must rebuild its confidence. It must restore the bond between the state and the citizens. It must treat every abduction as an assault on the republic. It must treat every killing as a national injury. It must confront the terror networks with strength and strategy. It must do these things because no country can survive on a wing and on a prayer. The clock is ticking. The country is bleeding. The Nigerians are watching. The world is watching. The Nigerian state must show that it still has the will to protect itself. It must show that it can defend Nigerians. It must show that it is not a defeated republic.
A new week has begun. The country cannot afford another filled with grief. While Nigerians sink deeper into despair, the pressing question remains: when will President Trump act, if at all, so that Nigerians can once again tend their farms, sell their corn, and bring their wheats to the market without fear? Nigerians are weary of waiting for rescue, yearning for the day they can live without daily encounters with violence, abduction, and the absence of security.