Nothing could have prepared the people of Naridon community in Kaduna State for what unfolded shortly before midnight. By sunrise, at least 30 people were confirmed dead, homes had been reduced to ashes, dozens of residents were dead and one family’s world had collapsed. Five siblings were killed in the violence, leaving one critically injured child as the only surviving link to a family that, just hours earlier, had gone to bed expecting another ordinary Monday, GODWIN ISENYO reports
The first light of dawn on Monday revealed a village struggling to comprehend the unimaginable.
Smoke still rose from the charred remains of mud houses in Naridon, a quiet farming settlement in Kamaru Ward of Kauru Local Government Area of Kaduna State. Burnt mattresses, twisted roofing sheets, blackened cooking pots and melted plastic containers lay scattered across compounds that, only hours earlier, had been homes filled with laughter, family meals and hopes of another planting season.
The silence was repeatedly broken by piercing cries of grief as women wailed while neighbours dug fresh graves. Men who had spent their lives cultivating the fertile land now found themselves burying loved ones instead of preparing their farms.
