How Many More Nigerians Must Die Before Tinubu’s Government Is Held to Account?

Nigeria’s death toll this week reads like a horror script: two students gunned down and two more abducted near the Federal Polytechnic in Oko, Anambra; seven farmers slaughtered in Eha-Amufu, Enugu; 24 civilians, including children killed by a female suicide bomber in Konduga, Borno; the assassination of a former PDP chairman in Benue; at least 12 people were killed and 11 injured after being beaten and set ablaze in Mangu LGA, Plateau; an attack by armed herders on a Tiv farming community in Taraba, which saw 62 houses burned and one person injured; and, most recently, bomb explosion in Kano kills five, 15 others injured. That’s at least 101 confirmed deaths, scores of abductions, and families upended. However, our leaders’ response has been ritualistic statements, half-measures, and sometimes deafening silence.

President Bola Tinubu, as Commander-in-Chief, carries the ultimate responsibility for national security. Instead, Nigerians have watched him defer, deflect, or deploy optics rather than take action. We were told bad roads prevented his condolence visit to the massacre sites in Benue, but helicopters were available. We saw him plan a Caribbean vacation even as bodies piled on our streets. We witnessed governors left to negotiate with bandits because the federal government refused to engage. Each excuse, every delay, echoes like a taunt:

Your lives aren’t worth the effort.

Ordinary Nigerians are paying the price. Parents buried their children who were shot. Farmers abandon fields to bandits.  Communities in Taraba wake to smouldering homes thanks to ‘herder’ attacks. Markets are ghost towns. Entire communities flee to forest fringes, fearing the next ambush. Meanwhile, federal intervention is confined to press releases and token troop movements. No comprehensive strategy, no synchronised intelligence, no rapid-response units, no protective infrastructure for universities and markets, and no meaningful dialogue with affected communities.

Security is not a luxury. It is a right. And until every Nigerian can walk freely in their country without fear of abduction or death, no one in power deserves to rest easy, least of all the Commander-in-Chief.

This pattern of neglect has one inevitable outcome: citizens lose faith in the institutions meant to protect them. The social contract unravels when local governments and traditional rulers must broker uneasy truces with criminals. When victims’ families plead for justice, only to see suspects roam free, the rule of law erodes. And when presidents avoid the heart of compassion, the moral authority of the office decays.

So again, we must ask:

How many more Nigerians must die before we demand accountability? How many funerals will it take to break through the averting gazes in Aso Rock? How many headlines will burn before the presidency halts its excuses and crafts a security policy worthy of “federal”?

If we do not insist loudly, persistently, and collectively that leadership equals presence and protection, this massacre will continue, and our country will hollow out beneath the weight of unavenged blood.

Nigerians deserve better than hasty condolences. We deserve a government that meets violence not with speeches but with action, swift, decisive, and just.

Until Tinubu’s administration proves it can defend its citizens, every statistic will prove its failure. And every death, unavenged, will stand as a challenge:

How much more blood must flow before enough is truly enough?

Nigerians must stop accepting condolence messages in place of action. We must reject weak excuses and demand accountability from those sworn to protect us. From Abuja to the smallest villages, citizens must rise and say: this cannot go on.

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