Let us peel back the layers of this charade, this grotesque theater of governance where blood flows freely while pronouncements of peace echo in hollow halls. The massacre in Ebonyi – those 15 souls abandoned after being promised sanctuary by the very State that vanished when the killers arrived – is not merely a tragic incident. It is a raw, bleeding symptom of a profound sickness, a mirror reflecting the terrifying reality of South-East, Nigeria.
We are told it began with cows. Cow! We are forced to witness the obscene calculus where the life of livestock is weighed against the lives of men, women, children – and found heavier. This is the ultimate dehumanization. The eternal, insulting pretext.
Property weighed against human breath, and breath found wanting. The exhumation of a colonial logic that reduces the native to less than chattel. The Nigerian State, embodied by its officials, its military, its police, arrives not to shield, but seemingly to manage the populace into stillness, into vulnerability. “Trust us,” they whisper, and the trusting are butchered. Six hours the slaughter reigned in Nkalaha, Amagu, and Umunesha. Six hours of impunity, while the promised protectors were ghosts.
But do not mistake this for isolated failure. Look beyond Ebonyi, and the individual horror multiplies into a statistical nightmare. A report by International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety) attributes over 8,000 deaths, within South East, Nigeria, since 2015 primarily to so-called “jihadist Fulani herdsmen.” Eight thousand. Let that number settle like ash on the tongue. Add to this the chilling accusation that the State’s own military apparatus accounts for hundreds more deaths – 200 in just the first three months of this year (2025) – under the convenient banner of fighting specters like ESN/IPOB. Is the Igbo native caught in a pincer, crushed between the external aggressor and the very forces sworn to protect him?
The scale becomes monstrous: 9,800 dead overall in this grim tally across the region since 2015. Enugu bleeds 1,800 souls, Abia 2,000, Imo 2,100, Ebonyi itself 1,000, Anambra 800. This is not random crime; it is described as a campaign waged from 600 secret bases, a thousand points of presence, armed with 400,000 weapons. An occupation, thinly veiled. An assault force operating with a freedom that screams complicity from the highest echelons or, at best, a terrifying impotence that amounts to the same for the victims.
They speak of investigations, of bringing perpetrators to book. Yet, the attackers, whether labelled “herdsmen” or “jihadists,” dissolve like smoke, enjoying an invincibility that mocks the very notion of law and order for the common man. The soldiers seize phones, silencing witnesses, curating the narrative of violence, lest the raw truth escape the confines of the controlled space.
This relentless negation of life, this persistent failure – or refusal – to provide the most basic function of a state, security, festers under the watch of those designated as leaders. The Governors of these afflicted states – Enugu, Abia, Imo, Ebonyi, Anambra – hold titles, preside over cabinets, command resources. They are, nominally, the chief security officers of their domains.
Therefore, faced with this documented reign of terror – the staggering body count, the vast network of armed militants operating with impunity, the horrific betrayal witnessed in Ebonyi, and the disturbing allegations against federal forces operating on their soil – the question must be put directly to them: What are you, the Governors of the South-East, actually doing to dismantle this machinery of death, to staunch the bleeding, and reclaim the fundamental right of your people to simply exist without fear of massacre?
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