There is no perfect human.
There is no flawless leader.
Yet from the few who rise in the long corridors of human history,
there are lessons—sharp, luminous, unavoidable—
lessons meant to guide our steps
toward a more dignified path for humanity.
Nigeria bleeds today.
And if we must ask who is to blame,
we must also remember the man who warned us—
the man who saw tomorrow.
He told us that our forests, our farms, our villages
would one day fall to terror
if we failed to act in time
to protect the innocent.
Benue—the food basket of the nation—
now lies in wide swathes of desolation.
Million after million displaced,
unable to return to the soil that once fed a country.
The Cross and the Crescent bleed the same red;
no corner of the land feels safe.
Borno—the famed Home of Peace—
is now a theatre of war.
Those entrusted with the solemn duty
to safeguard lives and property—
those armed with legislative power
and executive will—
seemed to have muted their ears
to the midnight cries of victims
cut down, burnt, butchered without provocation.
Is politics now played
with the blood of ordinary citizens?
Are leaders lost in other pursuits—
leaving only token condemnations,
the same tired ritual of medicine after death—
while the very purpose of governance,
the protection of life and property,
crumbles in their hands?
Call him a pessimist, if you wish.
Call him arrogant, troublesome, unyielding—
none of it erases the truths he raised.
None of it diminishes the warnings he gave
about marginalization,
about insecurity,
about a people slowly pushed to the brink.
With a burden burning in his heart,
he paid a price he knew too well.
Chained like a criminal,
carried from cell to cell,
he bore the weight of generations past
and the unborn yet to rise.
On the cold floor of a foreign dungeon
he waited—
not as a fugitive,
but as a man whose convictions could not be bought.
Every tactic used to silence him
fell to dust.
Every attempt to manufacture guilt
unraveled before the sun.
His only “crime” was urging his people
to defend themselves
from a terror he saw long before it arrived.
Whiter than snow,
steadfast as a lion,
he faced accusations crafted in shadows.
And so, for the sake of a wounded race,
he embraced the cost,
becoming a prisoner of conscience.
His weapon was never a gun.
His only force was his voice—
carried through radio signals
from a quiet, humble studio abroad.
With nothing but truth and a microphone,
he spoke.
And they feared what he spoke.
Like a lamb before slaughter
he stood in Pilate’s court—
accusers from North, East, South, and West
pointing trembling fingers at him.
He was condemned to perpetual confinement
though he had never shed blood,
never bore arms.
While true terrorists—
hands dripping with the blood of innocents—
received soft judgments,
pampered reintegration,
and returned to a compromised security network
still loyal to their hidden masters.
How could one man’s voice,
spoken from another land,
make an entire region stand still?
How did civic orders born on the internet
command obedience in streets, markets, villages?
For a people who once survived genocide,
“Never again” was not a slogan—
it was a covenant.
And during his trial
the world paused,
watching one man bend the arc of silence.
History remembers his cause.
He urged a fairer Nigeria.
He demanded equity, justice, dignity.
But when his appeals fell on the stone walls
of bureaucracy and political deafness,
he turned inward—to protect his own,
to free a people trapped in a union
sealed by Lugard’s careless pen.
Freedom does not always require a new flag.
Sometimes it simply requires
the right to live without fear,
to exist without prejudice,
to grow without ceilings fixed by ethnicity.
When a people are denied this—
when their humanity is graded as second-class—
their desire to stand apart
becomes not rebellion
but the ancient right of every indigenous people:
the right to survive,
the right to breathe,
the right to be free.