When Silence No Longer Becomes State Policy – Abdul Mahmud

By Abdul Mahmud

There are times when a country’s silence becomes louder than public statements. Nigeria has lived through such a season, one that the famous French philosopher, Albert Camus, in The Rebel, described as a silence in moments of outrage that is never neutral; a quiet complicity that strengthens the hand of the oppressor. The killings of Christians across the Middle Belt and the North have become a grim routine. Families are butchered. Churches are burned. Villages are emptied. Just a few days ago, the Christian cleric, Venerable Achi, who was abducted along with his wife and daughter, was murdered by his abductors. His wife and daughter are still with the murderous lot. The state is looking away. The political class pretends nothing has happened. The armed forces behave as though the violence is a natural occurrence. The silence becomes the directive principle of state policy.

This silence recalls Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”. In the novel, the quiet is deceptive. It hides horrors. It masks dread. Nigeria is living in that kind of quiet. All Quiet on the Nigerian Front captures that tragic quiet which carries the deeper accusation of complicity leveled against a country unwilling to confront those who shed the innocent blood of its citizens.. General TY Danjuma once accused the Nigerian state of collusion. His claim was direct. He alleged that the armed forces stood by while communities were wiped out. Many dismissed him. Others whispered that he had said what the political establishment feared to admit. His allegation, which has remained in the background of every massacre since then, casts a long shadow over the state’s inaction. , thereby strengthening the argument that silence is not a mistake. Silence is a decision.

Then President Donald Trump spoke. His remarks were shorn of diplomatese. He announced to the world that he was ready to invade Nigeria and wipe out the Islamic terrorists killing Christians. The statement stunned Abuja. It embarrassed power. It forced the state to abandon its long silence. Trump jolted the ruinous rulership that had grown comfortable with pretending. Suddenly the presidency became an emergency newsroom. Press statements poured out daily. The military announced new operations. Officials began to speak as if the killings had only begun the morning after the night before. Legislators scrambled into meetings. The House of Representatives held two days of closed sessions on national security. The Senate sent the Abba Moro-led Committee to Jos. The committee convened a public hearing. Political actors rushed to sound tough. One friend captured the frenzy perfectly in a private message. “Eferibodi dey run helter skelter. From pillar to post”. A whiff of Fela.

The question remains. Why did a foreign president’s threat succeed where the tears of Nigerians failed?
The answer exposes the moral decay at the heart of the state.
The long silence of the state was not neutral. Scholars like Achille Mbembe have described political systems where certain communities exist in what they call death zones. In these zones, people absorb violence as part of daily life. Their lives are not protected. Their deaths are not prevented. Their safety depends on chance. Nigeria has created these zones across the Middle Belt. Christians in these communities live under constant threat. Their safety is negotiated through luck. Their deaths are treated as unfortunate and ordinary. This is why Trump’s remarks produced panic. The silence had served a political purpose for too long. The silence protected hideous alliances. The silence avoided confrontation with powerful networks. The silence allowed the state to act as though responsibility belonged elsewhere. Trump’s intervention disrupted that comfort. The state feared external pressure more than it feared the judgment of its own citizens.
The reasons for the silence run deep. The first reason is political accommodation. The Nigerian state has alliances with actors who benefit from the chaos.

Confronting the killings directly would disrupt these alliances. Some actors provide political support. Some supply electoral machinery. Some command armed groups. Power protects these relationships. Citizens perish as a result. The second reason is ideological blindness. A section of the security elite does not recognise the killings as terrorism. They describe the attacks as local disputes. They reduce massacres to community clashes. This framing as I have consistently argued removes urgency. It shifts responsibility away from perpetrators and encourages the culture of denial. The third reason is weak institutions. The security agencies lack the capacity to respond decisively. The army is stretched thin. The police is compromised. Intelligence networks are fractured. Command structures have been weakened by politics. The state avoids taking bold actions because they expose failure. Silence hides weakness. The fourth and final reason is economic interest. Conflict has become profitable. Some officials enrich themselves through security votes.

Others gain from arms contracts and endless deployments. Nigeria has fully drifted into the Generals’ Blood-Budget Economy. Peace becomes a threat and chaos becomes the resource in this economy. William Reno’s work on shadow states explains this dynamic. Power thrives when disorder benefits those who control state machinery. All these reasons fed the silence. This is why Trump’s intervention caused an explosion of activity. The state did not rise because conscience suddenly returned. The state rose because silence became expensive. The reaction was not driven by compassion. The reaction was driven by fear of global embarrassment. The reaction was driven by a foreign threat. A sovereign nation should not be shaken into duty by a foreign voice. A serious state does not wait for outsiders to remind it of its own burial places. The tragedy becomes more painful because Nigerians have learned to expect little. Many communities no longer believe the state exists for them. They bury their dead. They rebuild. They mourn. They return to daily life with the knowledge that another attack may come. Faith in government has evaporated.

Trump’s remarks revealed how deep the despair has become. Many Nigerians clapped for a foreign leader threatening action on their soil. That applause is a sign of national distress. When the citizens of a country looks to a foreign president for protection, the legitimacy of its own government collapses. It was Max Weber who argued that a state must retain the monopoly over legitimate force. Nigeria has lost this monopoly in many regions. Militias kill freely. Fulani militia groups roam with confidence. Bandits operate as shadow governments. Terrorists command territories. Communities negotiate with criminals because the state has abandoned them. They even appear on Tiktok threatening to either kill Tinubu or abduct him. What effrontery!

The sudden noise from the presidency cannot mask the truth. Press statements do not protect villages. Public legislative hearings do not stop bullets. Tours do not prevent massacres. What Nigerians are witnessing are orchestrated performances; the type our people call “eye service”. Performances crafted for public relations rather than securing citizens’ lives. This needs to be stated: the Senate’s visit to Jos was symbolic. The public hearing will only end in another report that gathers dust. The closed sessions of the House will only produce recommendations that fade within weeks. The presidency’s avalanche of statements will not save a single life. Nigeria has travelled this path before. The rituals remain the same. The results remain unchanged.

What is required today is courage. Moral courage. Political courage. Institutional courage. The state must confront the networks behind the killings. Officers who collude must face justice. Governors who tolerate violence must face consequences. Economic beneficiaries of conflict must be exposed.

The state must reclaim control from terrorists and militias. Anything less is another obsequious performance. Trump may have broken the silence. The Nigerian state must break the structures that sustain it. Silence can no longer remain a state policy. The death of citizens cannot remain an administrative footnote. Christians in the Middle Belt deserve a country that sees their pain. Their stories should not depend on foreign outrage. Nigeria must decide whether it wants to remain a country that protects its citizens or a state that reacts only when embarrassed. Trump has forced a moment of clarity. The country must seize it. The lives lost demand nothing less.