BY ANTHONY ADA ABRAHAM
When truth is deliberately obscured, the silence that follows becomes a predatory force. The shadows cast by such dishonesty do not merely hide the past; they eventually expand to consume the present.
Following the brutal slaughter of about 40 innocent citizens in Plateau State , a region of deep personal significance, a disturbing pattern of narrative manipulation has emerged.
In the place of a transparent quest for justice, there is a calculated effort to deflect and divide. Rather than honouring the lives extinguished in Rukuba, the focus has been weaponised to create a convenient distraction.
Attention has been redirected toward a foreign figure who arrived in the wake of previous massacres in Benue State to offer tangible aid.
While the state remained paralysed, this individual was on the ground rebuilding homes and restoring the livelihoods of the broken. To question such humanitarian efforts while ignoring the systemic failure of leadership is a profound moral inversion.
It suggests that in certain circles, compassion is viewed with more suspicion than violence.
There is a glaring hypocrisy in welcoming ideologues …some of whom are blacklisted globally for extremism into the highest sanctums of power while vilifying those who provide actual relief to victims.
When radicalism is granted an audience and philanthropy is treated as a threat, the conscience of a nation is in peril.
The attempt to pivot away from the ongoing bloodshed is not just offensive; it is a dangerous normalisation of horror. These are no longer isolated tragedies but a continuous, devastating reality that no rational society should be asked to accept.
A chilling disparity exists in the level of public outrage. Mass demonstrations are organised for conflicts thousands of miles away, yet a hollow silence greets the terrorism occurring in the immediate backyard. There are no marches for the local dead, no widespread condemnation of the killers within, and no collective demand for accountability.
What is unfolding appears to be a systematic campaign of erasure. Communities are being emptied, towns are becoming desolate, and ancestral lands are being forcibly abandoned.
When alarms are raised about this visible displacement, they are dismissed as mere political maneuvering. Yet, the physical absence of a people from their land cannot be explained away by rhetoric.
The disconnect remains stark as life continues with festive normalcy in the corridors of power on the very days that citizens are being buried. In any society that holds human life sacred, such days would be marked by national mourning.
Instead, there is a sense that the vulnerable are expected to die in quiet obscurity while the privileged remain unbothered.
The image of a grieving mother holding a lifeless child is a universal warning. It is a reflection that could belong to anyone. To believe that current safety equals permanent immunity is a dangerous delusion.
Silence and indifference do not halt the spread of fire; they only ensure that it eventually reaches everyone.
The threat is no longer localised; it is moving through the North, into the Middle Belt, and toward the center. The blood of the innocent does not sleep, and a day of reckoning awaits those who have fostered this tragedy through either their actions or their complicity.
Anthony Ada Abraham, a journalist and social commentator, writes from Abuja.