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Something is happening in Nigeria that should trouble every conscience.
Hundreds of Nigerians are missing in Niger State. Thirty-seven others are dead. One group disappeared into the hands of gunmen. The other died while in the custody of a government security agency.
Different circumstances. Different victims. Different questions. But together, they force one painful question: What is happening to the value of Nigerian life?
Armed men attacked communities in Borgu district on August 21 and abducted hundreds of people. Over a month later, many remain missing.
The figures could not be independently verified, and authorities have not established an official number. However, what is not in doubt is that a mass abduction occurred and families remain desperate for the return of their loved ones.
Imagine being one of those families. Every morning begins with the same questions. Are they alive? Are they hungry? Are they injured? Are they frightened? Will they come home today? Then another day passes. Then another.
The government orders a rescue operation. Nigeria waits. But the missing remain missing. That is one tragedy.
Then comes another.
On September 17, 37 people held by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps after raids on suspected illegal mining operations were found dead in custody.
A survivor’s accounts alleged that detainees were packed into an overcrowded cell and that an unidentified substance was sprayed inside, causing people to begin experiencing breathing difficulties, collapsing and dying one after another.
The allegation of illegal mining against these people may be serious. The state has every right to enforce its laws. But an accusation is not a death sentence.
A suspect remains a human being. A detainee remains entitled to humane treatment. And once the state takes a person’s freedom, it assumes responsibility for that person’s safety. That is why the Niger State deaths demand answers.
What exactly happened inside that cell?
The Federal Government has ordered an investigation, while senior NSCDC officials were suspended pending the outcome. President Bola Tinubu has rightly said suspensions must not substitute for justice and that anyone found culpable should face accountability.
The investigation must establish the facts. But neither can the country afford silence.
How ironical, and how painful. Outside the walls of government custody, citizens are vulnerable to armed gangs. Inside the walls of government custody, citizens die under cloudy circumstances yet to unravel.
The two cases must not be falsely equated. The abductors are not the government. The government did not carry out the kidnappings. But the government has a duty to protect citizens from criminal violence. And when it takes people into custody, it assumes an additional duty to protect them from harm. That is the uncomfortable intersection.
Who protects the Nigerian?
The question is bigger than Niger State. It reaches every village where parents are afraid to send their children on the road or to school. It reaches every farmer who wonders whether return from the farm safe or in a body bag. It reaches every traveller who embarks on a journey with his heart quaking in his hands. It reaches every family that hears of a kidnapping and immediately starts calling relatives to find out who is missing.
Nigeria is becoming dangerously familiar with the language of tragedy. Then the news cycle moves on. But families do not move on.
A mother does not move on because television has stopped talking about her missing child. A father does not move on because another tragedy has become the headline. A widow does not move on because politicians have issued condolences. The dead do not become less dead because the country has become accustomed to death.
That is the real danger: normalisation.
We hear terrible things without feeling terrible. We discuss mass kidnapping as though it were a seasonal inconvenience.
We speak of deaths in custody as though some Nigerians are somehow less entitled to life because they are poor, accused or powerless. That is how a society loses something precious? gradually.
The question is not whether Nigeria has criminals. Every country does. The question is whether the Nigerian state has the capacity, will and institutional discipline to protect citizens from them. And when citizens come under the authority of the state, the question becomes even more direct: Can the state be trusted with the life of the person it detains?
A serious state must pursue criminals, protect victims, respect the law and hold its own officers accountable. That is what the rule of law means.
It means criminals do not acquire the right to terrorise communities simply because the state struggles to stop them. It also means the state does not acquire the right to mistreat people simply because they have been accused of wrongdoing.
The families of the 37 dead detainees do not need sympathy alone; they need the truth. And if investigations establish wrongdoing, negligence or misconduct, they deserve accountability. That is not revenge; it is justice.
A citizen is not merely somebody who pays taxes, votes during elections or carries a Nigerian passport but somebody whose life the state recognises as valuable. The ordinary Nigerian deserves that recognition. Even the person accused of breaking the law deserves it.
Because the strength of a nation is not measured only by how it treats its most powerful citizens. It is revealed by what happens to its most vulnerable.
And right now, Niger State presents Nigeria with an uncomfortable mirror.
In one direction, frightened communities ask: Where are our people? In another, grieving families ask: How did our people die? Between those two questions stands the Nigerian state.
It must answer. Not with propaganda. Not with excuses. Not with another cycle of outrage followed by forgetfulness. But with facts. With action. With justice.
The systems that allow such tragedies to happen must be fixed. Because Nigeria cannot keep losing human beings and merely counting them. It cannot keep announcing investigations and forgetting the victims. It cannot keep asking families to be patient while their loved ones disappear into uncertainty. And it cannot allow poverty, accusation or social status to determine whose death deserves national outrage.
Every Nigerian life carries a name. Every name carries a family. Every family carries a story. And every story is part of Nigeria.
Perhaps, that is the Nigeria we are in danger of losing. Not the territory.Not the flag. Not the anthem. But the conviction that the life of the ordinary Nigerian matters.
And, perhaps, the most painful irony is that, while families in Niger State, and elsewhere, are still searching for missing loved ones and mourning the dead, Nigeria’s political machinery has already turned toward 2027.
The campaign season for the 2027 general elections is already on course. Political parties and candidates are mobilising, building structures, making alliances and asking Nigerians for another mandate.
But before the politicians ask for new mandates, Nigerians have legitimate questions about old ones.
What became of the promises made when seeking the last mandate? What has been done with the authority already entrusted to those in office? What is the value of a new campaign promise to a haunted, grieving and hungry Nigerian? What does another political rally mean to an unprotected community contemplating the next vicious attack from within and without government?
These are not abstract political questions. The danger is that the political class may become so absorbed in the mathematics of 2027 that it loses sight of the human beings for whom political power supposedly exists.
The campaigns have come. But beneath the noise remains one final question hanging over Nigeria. Will 2027 come?
Of course, the calendar says it will. IBut will Nigerians arrive there with confidence that their country values their lives?
Or will we reach another election season having become so accustomed to death, disappearance and impunity that we barely notice?
That would be the saddest loss of all. Because a nation can survive bad roads. It can rebuild broken institutions. It can repair an economy. But when its people lose the belief that their lives matter, something deeper begins to die.
The question, therefore, is not merely what happened in Niger State. The question is what is happening to Nigeria.
And, in the quiet grief of those still waiting for their loved ones, perhaps, we are already hearing the answer.
