This is not government failure; it is moral bankruptcy

On June 13, 2025, Nigeria once again found itself drenched in the blood of innocent citizens. Over 150 people were brutally killed in an attack that ravaged the Yelewata community in Benue State. Homes were burned to the ground. Families were wiped out. Bodies were left charred beyond recognition. As we were still reeling from the magnitude of that horror, fresh tragedy struck again. On June 20, a bus carrying wedding guests from Zaria in Kaduna State en route to a wedding was attacked in the Mangu area of Plateau State. At least 12 passengers were murdered in cold blood, and 11 more were left injured.

In both cases, their only crime was that they belonged to an identity the mob found threatening.

What makes these killings even more terrifying is not just their frequency or scale, but our collective attitude toward them. Every time this kind of tragedy happens, the first instinct is to blame the government. We accuse it of not doing enough, of failing to provide security, of being slow to respond. While the government’s failures are not in dispute, this article is not about the government. This is about us. We, the people.

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The government did not pull the trigger in Yelewata. The president did not strike the match that set fire to the huts in Gwer. Soldiers were not the ones who blocked a bus full of wedding guests and butchered them one by one. The killers are among us. They are part of our communities. Some of them are even known to us, and yet we hide them. We protect them. We enable them.

Every time we say “the government is not doing its job,” we absolve ourselves of responsibility. We conveniently forget that it is not the government raising children to believe that one ethnicity is superior to another. It is not the government teaching religious hatred at home. It is not the government spreading divisive propaganda in beer parlors, in market stalls, in WhatsApp groups, and from pulpits across the country. That is us. That is our failure. What are we teaching our children? Are we planting seeds of unity, of tolerance, of shared humanity? Or are we raising a generation to believe that some lives matter more than others? Are we teaching them that their ethnicity must always come first? That their religion is the only true one? That people who do not speak their language are a threat? If that is what we are instilling, then what happened in Benue and Plateau is not a surprise; it is the harvest of what we have sown.

The truth is bitter, but it must be said. Nigeria is not being destroyed by terrorists alone. Nigeria is being destroyed by hatred. By bigotry. By our refusal to see each other as human beings before anything else. By our silence. And more often than not, by our hypocrisy. When the killings happened in Benue, some were silent because the victims were not of their ethnicity. When the killings happened in Plateau, others said little because they assumed the victims were part of a “problematic group.”

We wait to see the name, the religion of the victims before we decide whether to mourn them or justify their deaths. That is not empathy. That is not morality. That is barbarism. Some people even go further to ask, “Why didn’t you comment about this attack before?” or “Why are you only talking now because it affected your people?” That is not accountability, it is deflection. It does not bring back the dead. It only adds more poison to the already toxic atmosphere of suspicion and division.

We must stop measuring the value of human life based on ethnicity, religion or region. Every life lost in Nigeria should matter to every Nigerian. Whether that person is Tiv or Fulani, Igbo or Yoruba, Christian or Muslim, rich or poor, no one deserves to die simply for being who they are. Every life matters. Full stop. Anyone who believes otherwise has lost their humanity. This is not about justice anymore, it is about survival. It is about who we are becoming. We cannot expect peace if we are not willing to build it with our own hands.

So I ask again: what kind of community are we raising? What values are we instilling in our children and grandchildren? Are we teaching them that Nigeria is one, or that Nigeria is a battlefield of ethnic scores to settle? Are we preparing them to become adults who will uphold peace, or are we grooming them to carry guns and machetes in the name of revenge? Let us not forget that today’s child is tomorrow’s mob if we don’t redirect their hearts. And we do that not by preaching sermons on Sundays or Juma’ah khutba alone, but by the way we live, the way we speak, the way we react to tragedies, even those that don’t touch us directly.

We are quick to say “Nigerian happened to us” or “this country has failed us,” but have we not failed the country too? We fail it every time we let someone justify violence because it was against “those people.” We fail it every time we do not correct our friends or family when they speak with hatred. We fail it every time we remain silent in the face of such atrocities. The government is not perfect, but the government is not the one hiding these killers. We are. The killers live with us, they eat with us, they shop in our markets. They are not ghosts. They are protected by the silence of people who know them and say nothing. That is the real danger.

We must draw a line, and we must draw it now. No more excuses. No more silence. No more ethnic loyalty that excuses murder. The killings in Benue cannot be justified. The killings in Plateau cannot be justified. None of it can ever be justified. And until we begin to say that without adding “but” or “however,” this cycle will never end. Until we begin to mourn every life as if it were our own, there will be no peace. The future of Nigeria does not lie in the hands of politicians alone. It also lies in our hands, in our homes, in our hearts, and in our choices.

Let this article be a mirror. Not for the government. Not for the opposition. But for you and I. For our communities. This is not the time for blaming the government again. It’s time for us to end this madness, to stand for all lives regardless of their religious or ethnic affiliation, from the heart, rooted in shared humanity. If we cannot choose that, we are choosing the opposite: more blood, more funerals, more chaos. And none of us will win that war.

Written in grief, accountability, resolution, a steadfast refusal to let this become normal and in hope that we can choose humanity over barbarism together.