By Akin Samuel KAYODE

Nigeria has been plunged once again into mourning following the gruesome killing of over one hundred and seventy five innocent citizens in Kwara State. This tragedy is not merely a local calamity, it is a national wound that exposes the fragility of human life under a failing security environment. These were ordinary people whose only crime was to live, work, and hope within the borders of their own country. Their lives were violently taken, and with them, the sense of safety that binds any society together.

Behind the numbers are shattered homes and irreparable loss. Children will grow up without parents, parents will grow old without the comfort of their children, and communities will carry scars that time alone cannot heal. Farms, villages, and neighbourhoods that once echoed with daily life are now marked by silence, grief, and fear. No responsible nation can look upon such devastation without profound sorrow and righteous concern.

As a patriot and a committed citizen, silence in moments like this would amount to complicity. The first and most sacred responsibility of any government is the protection of lives and property. When over one hundred and seventy five people are murdered within their communities, it is no longer acceptable to speak in abstractions. This scale of loss is not an unfortunate accident, it is a glaring failure of governance and security.

This condemnation is not rooted in political antagonism but in moral obligation. The government exists to serve, protect, and preserve life. When it falls short, it must be told plainly, firmly, and respectfully. Expressions of sympathy, while humane, cannot replace decisive action, institutional reform, and accountability. Nigerians are exhausted by condolences that are not followed by consequences.

The tragedy in Kwara State reflects a deeper and more troubling pattern. Across the country, insecurity has become recurrent, predictable, and increasingly deadly. Communities raise alarms, yet protection arrives late or not at all. Criminal elements operate with alarming confidence, suggesting not only operational gaps but a dangerous erosion of deterrence. A state that cannot anticipate, prevent, or respond swiftly to threats is one that has lost its strategic grip.

It is painful to acknowledge that many of these deaths were preventable. Intelligence failures, inadequate surveillance, overstretched security personnel, and poor coordination continue to cost innocent lives. These are not mysteries beyond human solution, they are problems that persist due to neglect, inertia, and lack of political urgency. Each unaddressed weakness becomes an invitation to violence.

The people of Kwara State deserved better. They deserved visible security presence, early intervention, and a government that treats every warning sign as urgent. Instead, they were left exposed. The question that must be asked, soberly and honestly, is this, if the state cannot protect rural and semi urban communities, what protection truly exists for the average citizen.

This moment demands leadership that is courageous enough to accept responsibility. Defensive rhetoric and institutional finger pointing only deepen public anger and grief. True leadership acknowledges failure, corrects course, and reassures citizens through action rather than promises. The credibility of the state depends not on perfection, but on responsiveness and accountability.

Beyond the immediate security lapse lies a broader governance crisis. Persistent poverty, unemployment, weak justice systems, and social dislocation create fertile ground for violence. Security cannot be sustained by force alone. It requires social investment, community trust, effective policing, and a justice system that punishes crime decisively and fairly. Where justice is absent, violence thrives.

The families of the deceased deserve more than sympathy. They deserve truth, justice, and lasting support. Investigations into this massacre must be transparent and thorough. Perpetrators must be identified, prosecuted, and punished without delay or political interference. Justice delayed in moments like this becomes justice denied, and denial compounds grief.

Communities affected by this atrocity must not be abandoned once the news cycle moves on. Rehabilitation, psychological support, reconstruction, and renewed security presence are essential. Healing is not spontaneous, it must be nurtured by deliberate state action and sustained engagement. A nation proves its humanity by how it treats its wounded communities.

To the people of Kwara State, the nation owes solidarity that goes beyond words. Your pain is national pain. Your loss diminishes us all. Nigeria cannot claim unity while allowing any part of the country to bleed unnoticed or unsupported. Every Nigerian life carries equal worth, regardless of geography or status.

Citizens, too, must resist resignation. Patriotism is not passive acceptance of failure, it is the insistence that the country can and must do better. Speaking out against injustice and incompetence is an act of national loyalty, not rebellion. Silence emboldens failure, while principled voices strengthen democracy.

The government must understand that public trust is fragile and easily broken. Each massacre that goes unanswered erodes confidence further. Restoring that trust requires urgency, transparency, and measurable change. Nigerians are not asking for miracles, they are asking for commitment, competence, and protection.

At the heart of this tragedy are human beings whose dreams were cut short. Their laughter, labour, and love mattered. Their absence leaves a void that statistics cannot capture. We must refuse to reduce them to numbers or footnotes in national discourse. Memory itself is a form of justice.

We pray for the souls of the departed, that God grants them eternal rest. We pray for their families, that strength, comfort, and healing will surround them in this dark hour. We pray for the communities affected, that peace will return and fear will not define their future.

Finally, we pray for Nigeria’s leadership, that this tragedy will awaken a renewed sense of responsibility. A nation that fails to protect its people must summon the courage to reform itself. May this moment mark a turning point where life is valued, failure is confronted, and governance rises to meet its most basic duty.

Akin Samuel KAYODE.
Assistant Secretary, Monitoring and Feedback Committee, The Narrative Force.

By Chris Agbedo

In the cosmology of many Nigerian communities, not all spirits announce themselves with thunder or terror. Some arrive quietly, mischievously, almost playfully, appearing where they should not be, disappearing when they are most expected. One such figure, known in popular folklore as Wiriwiri, belongs to this subtle category of the uncanny. Wiriwiri is not a monster in the classic sense. It is a trick-being, a restless presence associated with sudden movement, evasion, and dislocation. In village lore, Wiriwiri is said to be seen one moment, standing at a junction, peering from behind a wall, hovering at the edge of vision, and gone the next. It does not attack; it confounds. It does not confront; it slips away. To encounter Wiriwiri is to be unsettled not by violence, but by uncertainty.

Elders describe Wiriwiri as the spirit of in-between spaces: crossroads, thresholds, dusk hours, moments when attention wavers. Children are warned that Wiriwiri appears when one is careless, distracted, or overly curious. Adults know better: Wiriwiri thrives where clarity is absent and authority refuses to stay put. It is invoked when something, or someone, cannot be pinned down. Unlike fearsome spirits that dominate through force, Wiriwiri exercises power through elusiveness. It shows itself just long enough to be acknowledged, then vanishes before it can be questioned. In this way, Wiriwiri resembles the trickster figures of wider African folklore – Anansi, Tortoise – but stripped of moral lesson and reduced to pure motion. Presence without duration. Visibility without accountability.

It is for this reason that Wiriwiri survives more in everyday speech than in ritual. When something keeps happening without explanation, elders mutter its name. When a figure appears briefly, acts decisively, and disappears before consequences mature, people say, “it is like Wiriwiri. The term has become shorthand for authority without anchorage, for influence that refuses to stay long enough to be examined.

Thus, to speak of verses of Wiriwiri on the canvas of the Villa is not to summon superstition into politics, but to recognize an old narrative pattern repeating itself in a modern setting. Folklore, after all, is history’s way of remembering behaviour before it acquires official language. When power begins to move like a spirit, appearing suddenly, vanishing routinely, leaving behind confusion and whispered interpretations; myth does not create the metaphor; it merely names it. And in naming it, prepares the canvas.

In essence, before politics learned the language of policy briefs and press releases, it spoke in myths. Civilizations explained power not by charts but by creatures, by beings whose defining talent was not strength, but movement. The Greeks feared Harpies because they arrived without warning and left without accounting. They distrusted Proteus because he could never be held to one shape long enough to tell the truth. They mourned Echo, that mythical disembodied soul, because she spoke endlessly yet possessed no body to stand behind her words. Africans, too, understood this grammar early. The Akan imagined forest beings that appeared and dissolved into leaves. The Yoruba spoke of Egbere, the crying custodian of wealth who could not be caught. In the southern Nigerian imagination, Wiriwiri perfected the art: seen briefly, gone instantly, leaving behind only murmurs and unease.

These were not bedtime tales. They were civic metaphors. They taught communities that the most dangerous authority is not the one that shouts, but the one that refuses to stay. Wiriwiri, in particular, is the spirit of the almost-seen. It inhabits thresholds such as doorways, junctions, the corner of the eye. It does not strike. It unsettles. It announces itself just enough to be acknowledged, then disappears before explanation can be demanded. In village speech, to describe a person or force as Wiriwiri-like is to say this: it acts, withdraws, and leaves others to manage the consequences.

The Harpies understood this instinctively. Zeus’s winged enforcers did not linger to debate justice. They descended, seized, punished, and vanished. The victims were left arguing with the air. Proteus refined the method. When grasped, he transformed, from lion through serpent and water to tree until the seeker tired. Echo suffered a different fate: condemned to repeat the words of power without agency, she faded until only sound remained. Even Anansi, the spider trickster of Akan lore, survived by weaving exits faster than consequences could follow. And the Egbere, crying endlessly while clutching his mat, taught that wealth is easiest to guard when one is never fully present. All these figures form a single mythic braid: power as movement, authority as elusiveness, governance as disappearance. It is against this ancient backdrop that modern Nigeria now finds itself telling stories again—not because it has regressed into superstition, but because lived experience has begun to rhyme too closely with myth.

Since 29 May 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has governed a restless republic, one strained by economic shock, social anxiety, and policy whiplash. Leadership, in such moments, is expected to perform the oldest democratic ritual: presence. Not permanence, not immobility, but availability. The sense that the one who decides also stays to witness the aftermath. However, what has increasingly defined this presidency is not steadiness, but movement. To say this is not to deny the legitimacy of travel. Statesmen travel. Diplomacy requires motion. Nigeria is not an island. But when travel ceases to be episodic and becomes habitual, when departures are frequent, returns brief, and explanations thin, movement itself becomes political language. Absence begins to speak.

Late December 2025 offered a telling vignette. The President departed Nigeria for what was broadly described as “Europe.” No itinerary worth the name. No public timeline. No clear articulation of purpose beyond the incense-laden assurance of “strategic engagements.” Twenty days passed. In a country where prices rise faster than wages and patience thins by the week, the silence grew louder than any official statement. When the President returned on 17 January 2026, there was relief—but it was the relief one feels when a storm pauses, not when it ends. Barely a week later, another departure followed, this time to Turkiye.

Again, Europe.
Again, strategy.
Again, bilateral.
Again, fog.

Here, Wiriwiri steps fully into the Villa.

The President appears, long enough to remind Nigerians that he is still there; then vanishes into foreign skies. Policies descend with Harpy speed: subsidy removal announced in a sentence, economic reforms unleashed with hurricane force. The social consequences land heavily on the ground. Then the architect departs. Like the Harpies, the action is sudden; like the Harpies, the agent is gone before protest ripens into dialogue.

Proteus, too, haunts the scene. Each attempt to pin down the purpose of these journeys meets a transformation. Is it economic rescue? Health maintenance? Diplomatic repositioning? Each question is answered with a different shape. What remains constant is the refusal to stay still long enough for scrutiny. Truth, Proteus teaches, is easiest to avoid when one never stops moving.

Meanwhile, Echo has taken residence in the press room. Statements issue forth, smooth, repetitive, reassuring. “Strategic bilateral engagements.” “In the national interest.” “To reposition Nigeria.” The words circle back on themselves, reflecting authority without adding substance. Like the nymph of old, the voice speaks endlessly, but the body of explanation has faded. Nigerians hear, but they cannot locate.

African folklore sharpens the discomfort. The Egbere analogy returns with insistence. Citizens are told that prosperity lies ahead, just beyond the next reform, the next sacrifice, the next foreign consultation. Yet, the custodian of this promise remains elusive, always traveling, always clutching the mat of policy, always crying that the road is long. Wealth, like the mat, seems portable. Hardship, like the tears, stays behind. Anansi’s shadow flickers too. The trickster survives by cleverness, by weaving narratives, by escaping tight corners. But Anansi stories always end the same way: laughter mixed with warning. Wit without responsibility eventually traps itself.

What troubles the Nigerian moment is not merely presidential absence, but the way absence has begun to feel like method rather than exception. Governance increasingly resembles a relay of appearances, short, symbolic, tightly managed, followed by extended withdrawals. The republic is asked to trust a process it rarely sees, to endure consequences overseen from afar. Defenders argue necessity. They say diplomacy is quiet work. They say global capital requires constant engagement. They say visibility is overrated. There is truth here. But democracy is not sustained by trust alone; it is sustained by reassurance earned through presence. Secrecy may be strategic, but opacity is corrosive. When explanations thin out, rumour rushes in. When leadership withdraws, myth fills the vacuum.

Nigeria is particularly vulnerable to this drift. It is a country with a long memory of distant rulers, leaders physically and emotionally removed from the governed. Against this history, frequent unexplained absences do not read as sophistication; they read as abandonment. Myth warns what happens next. When power behaves like a spirit, citizens stop engaging it as flesh and blood. Debate gives way to metaphor. Accountability dissolves into jokes, whispers, and folklore. Politics becomes something that happens to people, not something done with them. Yet, myths also insist on possibility.

Proteus, seized firmly, must eventually speak truth. The Harpies were banished when confronted. The Egbere could be captured, its mat reclaimed. Even Wiriwiri loses power when light is held steady and vigilance refuses to blink. Elusiveness thrives only where pursuit tires easily. The antidote to Wiriwiri governance is not stillness, but anchorage. Not fewer journeys, but clearer ones. Not louder statements, but fuller explanations. Presence, not as spectacle, but as accountability. Nigeria does not ask its President to hover endlessly over the Villa. It asks that when decisions bite, the decider stays close enough to feel the teeth. It asks that power remain human, locatable, answerable, imperfect, but present. Otherwise, leadership risks drifting fully into the realm of the uncanny: half-seen, half-understood, endlessly discussed but rarely confronted. A presidency remembered less for its policies than for its movements. A state governed not by schedules, but by sightings.

And so the canvas remains open. Here, myth and modernity meet, not to accuse, but to illuminate. Names replace spirits. Aircrafts replace wings. Press releases replace echoes. However, the old question endures, scratched into the wall of every polity that has ever watched its leaders come and go: Will power stay long enough to be held? This question, layered in Greek wind, Akan forest, Yoruba night, and Nigerian daylight, is what this piece returns to, brush in hand, laying metaphor upon reality, reality upon myth, until the picture sharpens. That, always, is the labour of *Verses on Canvas*.

By Farooq Kperogi

When I ended my update on the heartrending mass murder and abductions of the people of Woro in Kaiama LGA by calling attention to the Muslim identity of the victims, just so some screwdriver salesman won’t use “Google” to “verify” that they are Christians in the service of advancing a tendentious “Christian genocide” narrative, I came across to some people as being needlessly overdramatic. But I knew what I was doing.

Now, look at this headline from BarristerNG, a well-regarded, law-focused Nigerian news site: “Kwara Tragedy: Terrorists Kill Villagers for Refusing to Change Their Faith, 78 Buried in Mass Graves.”

It is based on Gov. Abdulrazaq Abdulrahman’s disclosure that the people, whom the governor was careful to identify as Muslims, were murdered because they resisted the extremist version of Islam the terrorists preach.

The headline is a devious, sinister, underhanded but nonetheless visible rhetorical maneuver to give the impression that even in a communal mass slaughter where both the villains and the victims are Muslims, it was a “Christian genocide.”

When you pair “terrorists,” which invariably evokes the imagery of Muslim extremists, with murder as punishment for refusal to “change their faith,” you can’t help but conclude that the victims are Christians.

Faith is a synonym for religion. Since there are two major faiths in Nigeria, and since there has been a tyrannical, well-oiled, carefully choreographed, even if factually impoverished, amplification of a “Christian genocide” narrative that suggests that only Christians are being murdered in Nigeria, that Muslims are not only spared from this but are, in fact, complicit in this “genocide,” the headline basically implies that the mass murders in Woro were just another evidence of “Christian genocide.”

If the screwdriver salesman or his ilk come across this sort of story in a Google search, they will present it as yet another “evidence” of “Christian genocide.”

BarristerNG’s headline is similar in many respects to the December 24, 2025, headlines of many Christian-owned Nigerian news media organizations, which captured the mass murder of Muslims in a Maiduguri mosque with headlines that gave the impression that Christians were the victims.

Channels TV’s headline was: “BREAKING: Many Feared Dead as Bomb Blast Rocks Maiduguri on Christmas Eve.” Other Lagos newspapers had headlines like, “Christmas Eve Bombing Leaves 5 Dead, 35 Injured in Borno.” There was no mention of “mosque” or “Muslim worshipers” in the headlines.

Since most people only read headlines, you can imagine the impression these headlines created in the minds of people who reason like the screwdriver salesman, who fishes for and sees “Christian genocide” anywhere and everywhere.

There is an endemic mass murder of innocents in most parts of Nigeria, which I won’t hierarchize by religious affiliation because I think that’s cruel and inhuman.

And I actually don’t have a problem with Christian communities that interpret their own experience of the nationwide sanguinary fury of bloodthirsty terrorists as religiously based genocide, since the villains self-identify as Muslims.

But I do have a problem with the dangerously divisive dimension this is now taking.

It increasingly seems that the basic humanity that binds us is becoming immaterial. There is now a growing, unreasoning, bigoted, pigheaded, and obnoxiously monomaniacal obsession with advancing the narrative of a Christian genocide that suggests that only Christians are being murdered, that Muslims are exempt from murder because they share a similar faith with the murderers (as if faith is all that matters in a person), that Muslim deaths don’t matter, and that every shocking death must be “Christianized” to make it worthy of sympathy and empathy–and, of course, a part of the rhetorical armory to prosecute the narrative of a “Christian genocide.”

If the facts don’t fit, force them. If you can’t force them, manufacture them. It’s distressing.

Every death diminishes and distresses me. We are, first of all, human before we’re anything else. Our ethnicity, faith, language, etc. are incidental to our humanity.