Nigeria bleeds, and the architects of its suffering sit in marble offices, counting gains while blood stains the land. ISWAP, Boko Haram, and bandits are not anomalies; they are creations, nurtured in the shadows of political ambition and state betrayal. Weapons flow not by accident but through corridors lubricated by greed. Intelligence is leaked, operations are sabotaged, and the institutions meant to protect life rot under the weight of complicity. The monsters stalking Nigeria’s villages are man-made, and their architects are cloaked in power.
Communities burn. Children witness horror as routine; mothers weep over graves too many to count. Farmers abandon fertile lands; markets collapse. Each act of terror is a calculated message: the state that promises protection is instead a sponsor of fear. Nigerian leaders weaponize insecurity; turning terror into political leverage, insurgency into currency, death into strategy. They watch as the very people they swore to protect vanish into the maw of chaos, trading the lives of citizens for power and profit.
The theology of betrayal is stark: “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). Indeed, the storm is upon Nigeria, born not of fate but of deliberate neglect. This is no mere governance failure; it is moral rot at the heart of leadership. To sponsor terror is to murder conscience, and to profit from fear is to crucify justice. Every explosion, every abduction, every blood-stained village whispers the truth: the hand that should shield the nation feeds the beast that devours it.
In the last decades, evidence is abundant: insurgent leaders vanish from custody; selective enforcement targets the innocent while the guilty walk free; contracts and funds flow to intermediaries connected to terror networks. ISWAP fighters do not emerge from empty air, they are sown in the soil tilled by political opportunists. Boko Haram is not an accident; it is a reflection of state ambition twisted into monstrosity. Bandits ride the waves of lawlessness that leadership cultivates. The monster is political. The monster is homegrown.
The remedy demands audacity: transparency must become uncompromising; complicity must be met with zero tolerance; the rot at the core of leadership must be excised. Nigeria cannot negotiate peace with monsters it cultivates. It cannot heal while those who sponsor death remain unchecked. Only a radical recalibration of governance, rooted in justice, courage, and moral clarity, can reclaim territory, restore trust, and save lives. Anything less is complicity.
Every Nigerian bears a responsibility. Civic participation, speaking truth to power, and refusing to normalize death as a political instrument are acts of resistance, acts of faith, acts of survival.
Nigeria’s monsters are man-made, but so too is their defeat. The nation can rise, but only if it refuses to feed the beast any longer.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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