Fulani bandits and other terrorists are the weapon of power mongers politicians from the Northern parts of Nigeria who wants to be in power by all means but have nothing to offer.
During the first and second Republic, the most loved politicians who served their people and make a huge impacts both on welfare and impact on future generations of their people did not result in bringing in Terorists in order to rise to power.
They are generally loved by their people.
They tell us there is no genocide against Christians in Nigeria. Yet girls are kidnapped and held for refusing to renounce their faith, students are stoned for thanking God, and entire communities are stripped of their identity—all while politicians look the other way. This is not neglect. This is deliberate.
They keep telling us there is no genocide against Christians in Nigeria. They say it confidently, like the matter is settled. But ask the mothers who sleep with one eye open in makeshift IDP camps. Ask the families who have waited seven years to hear a credible word about Leah Sharibu. Ask the classmates of Deborah Samuel who watched her dragged out and stoned in broad daylight for thanking God online. Ask the communities whose ancestral headquarters were relocated by a politician’s pen to weaken their identity and erase their voice. The truth is not hidden—it screams. And the silence of the state is not ignorance; it is complicity.
In 2018, Boko Haram kidnapped 113 schoolgirls from Dapchi. Most were released, but Leah Sharibu, then just 14, was held back because she refused to renounce her Christian faith. That single act turned her into a permanent captive. Her fate became a bargaining chip in a political marketplace where promises are made during press conferences and forgotten once the cameras leave. Presidents made pledges. Security chiefs nodded solemnly. Committees were formed. Statements were issued. Yet Leah remains missing. Her family waits. The nation looks away.
And then there was Deborah. A bright, outspoken student at a College of Education in Sokoto. She posted a simple expression of gratitude to God after her exam. Her classmates accused her of blasphemy. They dragged her outside and stoned her to death. Adults watched, recorded, and justified the violence as defense of faith. The killers celebrated openly. The government tiptoed. The legal system blinked. And the nation moved on as if the barbarity were just another headline.
These tragedies are only the visible edges of a deeper wound: the systematic erosion of religious freedom in parts of Northern Nigeria. Churches have been burned. Communities displaced. Pastors assassinated. Farmlands seized. Yet, when Christians cry out, the political class responds with evasions. “Clashes happened.” “Tensions escalated.” “Unidentified gunmen attacked.” But those who bury the victims know the attackers by name, by affiliation, by location—and often by political protection.
In Bauchi State, Tafawa Balewa—a predominantly Christian local government—had its official headquarters relocated to Bununu. Not for development, not for community consent, but for power. A courageous female Christian member of the House of Assembly protested and was suspended for nearly an entire legislative session. Her voice was silenced and punished. The courts initially blessed the abuse, only reversing it quietly months later.
This is what happens when politics becomes a marketplace for religious identity instead of a protector of citizenship. Politicians who are too cowardly to govern fairly choose to govern divisively. Instead of enforcing law, they empower mobs. Instead of disarming militias, they negotiate. Instead of protecting schools and farms, they protect their reelection plans.
The violence grows. Girls with top national exam scores cannot obtain the certificates needed to apply for university because they come from the “wrong” religion in the “wrong” district. Widows who escape massacres are denied relief because of political factors more than humanitarian ones. Officers in uniform whisper instructions for navigating systems that are no longer institutions of a nation, but checkpoints of tribal and religious bias.
Let’s stop pretending. This is not neglect. It is the deliberate poisoning of national identity by political elites who profit from fear.
These leaders are not neutral. They know what they are doing. They fan ethnic tensions to retain influence. They excuse violence to maintain patronage. They blame “unknown gunmen” while shaking hands with those who arm them. Their politics is a performance for cameras, but their decisions are written in blood.
Nigeria must choose. It must decide whether it will be a nation held together by truth or a territory held together by fear. No country survives where citizens must whisper their faith, where a child’s prayer can become her death sentence, where justice bends before clerics and politicians who feed on division like vultures over a battlefield. A nation that abandons its own in the hands of killers has already begun to lose its soul. Until Nigeria finds Leah, until it speaks Deborah’s name without trembling, until it protects the Gwoza girl whose brilliance should have been her passport, this country will remain a house built on sand, shaking under the weight of its own silence. The time for denial has ended. If Nigeria is ever to know peace, it must first learn to defend the innocent. Where faith becomes a crime, humanity has already died.
-Mogaji Wole Arisekola writes from Ibadan.
