mmunities are driven out like cattle. Homes are burned.
Children vanish into forests in the hands of kidnappers who trade human life for ransom.
The killing does not whisper. It roars...
Still the nation scrolls.
Still the arguments rage about distant conflicts on another continent, under another sky.
It is a baffling spectacle.
A country at war with itself, yet its citizens gather in digital marketplaces to discuss battles that have no bearing on the survival of their own people.
Why does this happen?
The answer is not flattering.
It happens because distant wars are easier to talk about than the one at home.
A man can debate foreign politics without risking anything.
He can shout his opinions into the wind and feel clever, informed, and righteous. But to confront the failures of one's own nation requires courage. It requires honesty.
It demands that a man admit that his house is on fire and that he has done little to put out the flames.
Many would rather not look at the fire.
There is also the comfort of illusion. Foreign conflicts feel dramatic and grand.
They are packaged neatly by television and social media, reduced to heroes and villains, good nations and bad nations. It is easy to pick a side in someone else's war.
Nigeria's crisis is not so neat.
It is messy. It is complicated. It exposes corruption, cowardice, failed leadership, and a society that has grown too accustomed to blood in the dust. To face it fully is to confront uncomfortable truths about power, religion, politics, and our own silence.
So many choose the easier road.
They turn their eyes away from the villages that burn in Kaduna, the fields abandoned in Benue, the forests where kidnappers hold their victims in chains. They look instead to wars on distant maps and speak loudly about justice there.
But silence about injustice at home is its own form of surrender.
A people who spend their voices defending foreign lands while their own nation collapses have forgotten a simple duty. Charity begins at home. So does courage.
Nigeria does not need more commentators on wars abroad.
Nigeria needs citizens who will look squarely at the blood on their own soil and say, this will not stand.
Until that day comes, the illusion will continue. The debates will rage online. The distant wars will feel important.
<><>And the real war, the one devouring Nigeria piece by piece, will continue while its people argue about battles that are not theirs.
ECP Friday Editorial
Social Commentary
The Truth and Nothing But the Truth