Is Genocide Stalking Nigeria? A Nation’s Blood Cries Out for Answers

DDNews Editorial

By Ogungbayi Adeyemi Beedee

In the shadow of minarets and steeples that once symbolized Nigeria’s vibrant pluralism, a grim question echoes across the land: Is genocide unfolding before our eyes? The Federal Government owes its citizens no, demands a straight answer, not the evasive platitudes that have become its hallmark. As brigadier generals fall to jihadist blades, schoolgirls vanish into forest lairs, and church pews run red with the blood of the faithful, this is no mere “security challenge.” It is a systematic slaughter, a calculated erosion of lives, that reeks of ethnic and religious targeting. The killings and abductions ripping through our communities are not imported from distant war zones; they are homegrown horrors, festering within our borders, demanding we confront whether Nigeria is complicit in its own descent into barbarism.

Look no further than the fresh wounds of November. On November 18, gunmen stormed the Christ Apostolic Church in Eruku, Kwara State, during evening worship, gunning down at least three congregants two inside the sanctuary, one dragged into the bush and abducting the pastor and several worshippers. Eyewitnesses recounted the terror: Shots shattered the hymns, forcing parishioners to cower behind altars, only to be hunted down like prey. “They dragged them out… up to 30 with guns,” one survivor whispered, as the assailants melted into the forests bordering Kogi State. How do we classify this? A “bandit raid”? Communal clash? Or the latest in a string of assaults that disproportionately target Christian spaces, driving families from ancestral lands in the Middle Belt? Just days earlier, on November 17, 25 girls were snatched from the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State, their dormitory a battlefield where a vice principal was slain in cold blood while shielding the children. One escaped, but 24 remain ghosts in the wilderness, their fate a grim echo of abductions past. And today, November 21, armed bandits invaded St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri, Agwara, Niger State, abducting dozens reports swirl of 52 students, teachers, and even a security guard shot in the fray. These are not random crimes; they are precision strikes on the vulnerable children in uniforms, believers in prayer count them as what you will, Mr. President, but the ledger of terror grows bloodier by the dawn.

These atrocities are not whispers from Somalia or Sudan; they are screams from Sokoto to Sambisa, Zamfara to Zaria. Over 2,266 lives snuffed out by bandits and insurgents in the first half of 2025 alone, surpassing all of 2024’s toll. Muslims and Christians alike bleed, but the pattern is undeniable: Christian farming communities in the North-Central bear the brunt, their villages razed, harvests razed, in what the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect calls a “systematic” assault. U.S. President Donald Trump’s fiery accusations of “Christian genocide” echoed by voices from Nicki Minaj to the UN have drawn global ire, with threats of military intervention that Abuja furiously denies. Yet, even as Foreign Ministry spokesmen decry “divisive narratives,” the African Union Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf’s dismissal rings hollow when brigadier generals like M.A. Uba ambushed and executed by ISWAP in Borno on November 17 are felled in their own backyard. Nigeria boasts Africa’s third-strongest military 280,000 troops, a Global Firepower Index crown of 31st worldwide yet our vaunted forces crumble before ragtag insurgents, begging the question: Do we need foreign boots, or a reckoning with our rot?

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Flash back to 2014, under President Goodluck Jonathan, when Boko Haram’s shadow first lengthened. The Chibok abduction 276 girls yanked from their dorms on April 14 ignited the #BringBackOurGirls inferno, a global cry that toppled Jonathan’s regime in 2015. Then-opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari today’s President Bola Tinubu’s predecessor waved placards in Abuja, thundering against Jonathan’s “inability to protect citizens,” his government dismissing the outrage as northern sabotage ahead of elections. Michelle Obama, Angelina Jolie, the Pope they all held signs, shaming Nigeria into the spotlight. Buhari won on that fury, pledging: “We cannot claim victory over Boko Haram without rescuing the Chibok girls.” A decade on, 112 Chibok girls languish in captivity, their plight a scar on the nation’s soul. Today, as 24 Kebbi girls and 52 from St. Mary’s join the chorus of the vanished, where are the placards? Who rallies for these “Chibok echoes” at St. Peter or whatever school next falls? The silence from Aso Rock is politicization incarnate: Jonathan’s denial was electoral calculus; Tinubu’s is a prelude to 2027’s throne wars, where insecurity is a sideshow to succession.

Who bears the blame? The government, first and foremost, for its schizophrenic sword: Bandits who slaughter and snatch are “pardoned” through amnesty deals, reintegrated as “repentant” while agitators like IPOB or Yoruba Nation advocates are branded terrorists, their cries for self-determination twisted into treason. Fulani militias accused of ethnic cleansing in Benue and Plateau evade the terrorist tag, their “herder-farmer clashes” euphemism shielding jihadist veins. Boko Haram and ISWAP thrive on this double standard, their “repentant” ranks swelling with unpunished killers, while security votes vanish into patronage pits. The military, Africa’s supposed powerhouse, is starved of will, not just weapons generals die because intelligence fails, troops desert, and priorities skew toward quelling protests over pursuing phantoms. And the people? Complicit in our apathy, until the next village burns.

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As 2027 looms, Tinubu’s gaze fixes on ballots, not body counts trillions for campaigns, pennies for patrols. Nigeria deserves more: Protection that honors our constitution’s pledge to life, not just lip service to “renewed hope.” The way forward is ruthless clarity. Declare all perpetrators bandits, jihadists, militias terrorists without exception, unleashing the full fury of law. Overhaul the security architecture: State police with teeth, not leashes; a National Security Trust Fund ring-fenced from political vampires; intelligence fused with community rangers, not spies in senatorial pockets. Shun foreign saviors Trump’s saber-rattling risks more chaos than cure and reclaim sovereignty through accountability: Court-martial failed commanders, prosecute pardoned predators, and let citizens recall leaders who prioritize polls over patrols.

Genocide? The UN’s prevention expert warned in 2023 of thresholds crossed in the North-West and Central; today, with 1,683 school abductions since 2014 and rising, the line blurs into truth. But labels alone won’t staunch the blood. Nigeria, awaken: This is not Jonathan’s echo or Buhari’s ghost it’s our apocalypse now. Demand answers, or bury the republic with the next forgotten girl. The placards of 2014 weren’t props; they were prophecies. Heed them, before 2027 dawns on graves.