Southeast Insecurity: Your Silence Is Betrayal, Their Blood Will Speak, and Justice Will Find the Guilty

By Enyinnaya Appolos

For years, your silence has been the loudest betrayal. While the Southeast descended into chaos, you watched, as criminals turned thriving communities into ghost towns. Businesses collapsed. Parents buried their children. The blood of innocent Igbo men, women, and children now soaks the very soil that once gave them life. One thing is certain: their blood will speak, and justice will find the guilty. It may take a while, but their blood will certainly speak!

Those who refused to condemn the violence in its infancy, who failed to raise their voices against the hijacking of a legitimate cause by bloodthirsty criminals, are complicit. They cannot now appear on television screens, pontificating with hollow outrage. The time to speak was then. Your silence then is betrayal now.

How long shall we continue to abandon our homeland and seek safety in another man’s land? Today, in many Igbo communities across the Southeast, entire families have been wiped out by criminals masquerading as agitators. Children orphaned. Women widowed. Elders butchered. Towns held hostage by fear. Yet, many voices, once loud in national politics, have fallen disturbingly silent as their own communities bleed. You cannot continue to be called Ochiagha or Agunechemba in another man’s land while your homeland is at war with itself. No, you can’t!

Where was your voice when markets were shut down every Monday in fear of “unknown gunmen”? Where was your outrage when schoolchildren were chased out of classrooms, when voters were threatened, when kidnappers took over our roads? Where were your hashtags then? In case you’ve forgotten, our bushes, our farmlands, even your mansions at home, have become safe havens for criminals.

This is not just negligence, it is enabling. It is a conspiracy of silence that has emboldened monsters in our midst. It is dishonest to keep pointing fingers at security agencies, while turning a blind eye to those within our own ranks who issue threats, enforce lockdowns, and slaughter in the name of liberation. The truth? The killers of our people are not ghosts, they are Igbos.

When did the fight for freedom begin to look like mass murder? When did a movement for justice become a front for extortion and terror?

You cannot play politics with the blood of your own people. Those who deliberately chose to be mute while these crimes festered cannot now pretend to seek solutions. Leadership is not press conferences and poetic lamentations. It is standing up for truth, even when it’s inconvenient.

This is where Governor Charles Soludo stands out. Amid widespread cowardice, he has shown rare courage. He didn’t sugarcoat reality. He didn’t dance around truth to score cheap political points. Soludo looked his own people in the eye and said: “We are the ones killing ourselves.” He has called out the criminals parading as freedom fighters. He has named the cancer eating Igbo land from within.

That is what leadership looks like, choosing the hard truth over easy applause. While others chased popularity, Soludo chose principle. While others played to the gallery, he chose to act. His security initiatives in Anambra may not yet have eradicated the threat, but his clarity of purpose has redefined what it means to lead.

The Southeast needs leaders who will say “enough is enough” leaders who will rally the people not with empty slogans, but with bold truth and decisive action. We need leaders who will speak when it’s hard, stand when it’s dangerous, and act when it matters most. What we do not need are those who only find their voices when it is convenient leaders who take populist stands against insecurity for selfish or political gain. Our land demands courage, not opportunism.

To those who remained silent: you do not get to rewrite history. The blood is on your hands. And the cries of the innocent will not be silenced. History will remember not just the atrocities committed, but the voices that chose comfort over courage.

Even you, their informant, you are not safe. The dog you’re feeding today will one day turn around and bite you. You may think you’re being smart by giving out information about your own people to criminals. You think you’re untouchable because you’re helping them now? Just know that the day they don’t get what they want from you, you’ll be the next target. You will become the hunted.

And don’t expect anyone to warn you when that day comes. It will happen swiftly and without mercy.

To those offering them support, whether you are here at home or abroad, through logistics, shelter, medicine, finances, or intelligence, you are just as guilty. You are not helping any cause. You are aiding bloodshed. You are enabling the destruction of your own homeland, all for selfish gain or misguided loyalty.

You think the gods of the land are asleep? You think the blood of the innocent spilled on our soil will not cry out for vengeance? You will not escape the wrath of the ancestors.

Every woman raped, every child orphaned, every father murdered, their spirits are watching. They will rise to demand justice, and when they do, your money, your connections, your politics will not protect you.

You may not be the one pulling the trigger, but you are the one filling the gun with bullets. Your hands are not clean. Your silence is not innocence. Your support makes you part of the evil consuming the Southeast.

This is a warning. This is a call to conscience. If you are part of this evil network, whether by action or by silence, repent, withdraw, confess. Because the same forces you empower will destroy you. And history will remember you as one of those who betrayed their land.

You cannot sell your people to darkness and expect to dwell in peace. You cannot sponsor death and expect to live free. Their blood will speak. And it will find you.

The time for silence is over. The time for honest reckoning has come. Igboland must rise above self-inflicted pain. And the healing can only begin when we stop pretending the wounds are not ours.

For Diaspora Digital Media Updates click on Whatsapp, or Telegram. For eyewitness accounts/ reports/ articles, write to: citizenreports@diasporadigitalmedia.com. Follow us on X (Fomerly Twitter) or Facebook