By every moral, political, and historical measure, Nigeria is in a moment that demands decisive leadership not ceremonial handshakes with party decampees, not empty photo-ops, and certainly not the eerie silence that now hangs over Aso Rock like a dark cloud.
A Brigadier General of the Nigerian Army an officer in the highest grade of direct combat leadership was ambushed and brutally murdered, along with members of his team. This is not just a national tragedy; it is a direct strike on Nigeria’s sovereignty. In saner climes, the ground would have shaken. In the Nigeria of Generals Babangida, Abacha or even Olusegun Obasanjo the entire security architecture would have gone into overdrive within hours, not days. Retaliation, arrests, decisive force, and strategic clarity would have followed immediately. Odi Village and Zaki Biam is still fresh in our mind. You may disagree with their methods, but you could never accuse their governments of indifference.
Today? Silence. Shrugging. Business as usual.
Barely had the nation processed that horror when 25 female secondary-school students were kidnapped yet another entry in a long, exhausting list of mass abductions. No outrage from the presidency. No national address. No emergency security briefing announced. No presidential command to re-establish deterrence.
And as if that were not enough, a serving federal minister a symbol of state authority publicly descended into primitive self-help and jungle behaviour, acting like an unrestrained hooligan insulated from consequence. A cabinet member! The presidency’s silence is not just troubling; it is enabling.
Yet amid all this turbulence, President Tinubu and Vice President Shettima found the time, energy, and enthusiasm to receive coarse decampees into the ruling party as though Nigeria’s foremost problem today is not terrorism, insecurity, hunger, and institutional breakdown, but the political choreography of who crosses from which party into the APC.
Is the president sensitive to anything? Does he react to anything? Or is Nigeria now living under a government that reacts to nothing?
Leadership is not only about economic policies or international travels; it is fundamentally about responsiveness to crisis, about demonstrating that the state is awake, alive, and emotionally connected to the pain of its own citizens.Financial software
Today, the Nigerian government appears clinically detached.
IS CIVILIAN RULE BECOMING A CURSE?
This is the uncomfortable question Nigerians have begun to whisper. Under military regimes, for all their faults, certain lines were uncrossable: killing a top military commander or abducting dozens of students would have triggered immediate, forceful, and coordinated state response. Today’s democracy, sadly, hides behind the rhetoric of “due process” to mask a crippling indecision.
But make no mistake — the problem is not democracy itself; it is the quality of leadership operating it. A civilian government can be strong, responsive, disciplined, and emotionally alert. But a civilian government can also be aloof, numb, and dangerously distracted.
Nigeria today is testing the limits of the latter.
HOW DO WE ESCAPE THIS TRIANGLE OF FAILURE?
1. Restore the moral authority of the state. Silence from the top emboldens criminals. A president must speak early, clearly, and forcefully in moments of national pain.
2. Rebuild the chain of command in security agencies. The killing of a general should have triggered a multi-agency joint strike. The fact that it didn’t, shows systemic paralysis.
3. Enforce discipline within government. Any minister who behaves like a street thug in public should be suspended pending investigation. Governance cannot co-exist with gangsterism.
4. Stop politicising governance. Party defections are not governance. Nigerians are not dying for APC, PDP, or LP. They are dying because the state is losing control.
5. Re-anchor leadership to empathy and urgency. A president who does not feel cannot lead. A president who does not react cannot protect.
NIGERIA DOES NOT NEED A STONE-HEARTED COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
President Tinubu must decide urgently whether he wants to be a leader who responds to the nation’s heartbeat or a spectator in his own presidency. A country where generals are assassinated, girls are abducted, ministers behave like touts, and the presidency maintains criminal silence is a country flirting with collapse.
Nigeria is not asking for miracles. Nigerians are simply asking for responsiveness, leadership, and the dignity of a government that does not behave like it is sedated.
If the president reacts to nothing, the nation will soon feel everything including the consequences of that silence.
@Dr. Liborous Oshoma Esq.
Legal Practitioner based in Lagos.
