June 6, 2026
The whole world took notice when the Chibok abduction happened. It was so daring that it was almost unbelievable. How could such a raid be planned and executed without intel being aware? How could so many young girls disappear in plain sight? How could security be bridged so easily, so blatantly? Especially in an area where security antenna should have been at its most alert? These were some of the questions the world sought to know. Many people smelled more than the clichéd rat. They smelled connivance. They smelled complicity. The body language of the northern elite at the time showed that there could be more to it. So the world quietly retreated despite its outrage. You can’t cry more than the bereaved after all.
In journalism, news is when something happens out of the norm. Like a man biting a dog. Like students being abducted in numbers from schools. Like people being killed in their places of sanctuary. So, when the abnormal becomes the norm, it ceases to be news. Which is why the abductions, the violent killings happening in almost all parts of the north don’t make headline news anymore around the world. They don’t evoke the same sense of outrage as a decade and a half ago. It is either we know what we are doing, which makes the whole thing intentional. Or we don’t know what we are doing which makes us incompetent and an object of pity. Either way, the world had left us largely alone to our savagery. Until the recent outcry of Christian genocide which got the US involved for reasons only the US can decipher.
