By Sonala Olumhense,
There is a moment in every national catastrophe when accounting must be done. Not later, not after the next election, not when the dust settles over the next mass grave.
For Nigeria, that moment is now.
Since President Bola Tinubu stood at the Yakubu Gowon Airport in Jos on April 2, 2026, and promised grieving Nigerians that “this experience will not repeat itself,” more than six states have recorded fresh massacres:
Plateau. Nasarawa. Zamfara. Borno. Benue. Kaduna.
The dead, grieving and injured are not statistics. They are Nigerians who believed someone was governing their country.
Nobody is.
Let me be direct, as one who has been tracking the insecurity and demanding accountability for it for years. When Tinubu declared a nationwide security emergency in November 2025, I commended him for waking up, then I called his response what it was: weak and entirely devoid of the rigour that Nigeria’s multiple and distinct theatres of conflict demand.
I was right: Within 71 days of his declaration, over 316 civilians had been killed across 15 states, in more than 31 documented attacks.
In effect, the criminals were calling the Nigerian leader out, demonstrating the hollowness of his Jos Airport promise and leadership.
Because what followed the emergency declaration was not a strategy. It was a sequence of gestures.
Recruitment targets that fell far short of what the Inspector-General himself had recommended. On Christmas Day, the ultimate admission of failure: American airstrikes on Nigerian soil against ISIS targets, which the government scrambled to claim credit for, after failing to stop the same groups from killing Nigerians for years.
The pattern has been consistent across administrations.