Earlier this week, I learn what many take into account as in regards to the most saddening story within the Bible.
It’s a story so darkish that it forces a painful reflection on the depths to which human society can descend when authority collapses and morality is deserted. It’s the account of the Levite and his concubine in Judges 19, a grim episode set in a time when, because the scripture repeatedly emphasises, “there was no king in Israel; everybody did what was proper in his personal eyes.”
The story is brutal. A travelling Levite, in search of shelter for the night time, is hosted by an aged man within the city of Gibeah. However the night time descends into horror when a mob of homosexuals surrounds the home, demanding to violate the customer. In a surprising try to appease the attackers, the host provides his personal virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine. What follows is an ethical collapse of staggering proportions: the Levite himself pushes his concubine out to the mob. She is assaulted by the night time, deserted, and in the end dies from the ordeal.
It’s a story of cowardice, of management failure, and of a society that had misplaced its ethical compass.
It’s also, disturbingly, a narrative that resonates with present-day Nigeria.
That connection turned painfully clear with the extensively circulated video of a pupil of the College of Jos, brutalised by bandits alongside the street between Plateau and Kaduna States. The younger man’s cries, his helplessness, and the utter absence of rescue encapsulate a actuality that many Nigerians now reside with day by day: bandits on rampage.
His ordeal is just not remoted. Throughout the nation, from the forests of the North-West to the highways of the North-Central, residents are kidnapped, crushed, and typically killed, not by international invaders, however by legal parts working boldly inside Nigeria’s borders. Essentially the most troubling query this raises is so simple as it’s profound: is there actually a authorities in cost?
Within the biblical account, the chaos was defined by the absence of a king. Immediately, Nigeria has a president, governors, lawmakers, and an unlimited safety structure. But, in lots of components of the nation now described as “ungoverned areas,” the authority of the state seems both absent or ineffective. Bandits and insurgents impose their very own guidelines, extract ransoms, and decide the destiny of residents.
That is the place the parallel turns into uncomfortable.
Simply because the Levite, entrusted with accountability, selected self-preservation over safety and pushed his concubine into hurt’s approach, there’s a rising notion that Nigeria’s ruling class has equally deserted the citizenry, leaving peculiar individuals uncovered to violence whereas these in energy stay insulated.
The symbolism is stark.
The citizen turns into the concubine, sacrificed to appease forces that the state both can not or is not going to confront decisively.
The timing of the UNIJOS pupil’s ordeal provides one other layer of irony. The video circulated across the similar interval Senate President Godswill Akpabio prompt that insecurity within the nation is being exaggerated and even orchestrated by political opponents forward of the 2027 elections. In impact, the struggling of residents is decreased to a instrument in political contestation.
Sponsored
Such a place isn’t just dismissive, it’s harmful.
The position of the legislature, particularly underneath the management of the Senate President, is to offer oversight, interrogate government motion, and be sure that authorities responds successfully to the wants of the individuals. To downplay the size of insecurity is to danger normalising it.
And therein lies the deeper tragedy.
When leaders start to rationalise or politicise struggling, the road between governance and abandonment turns into dangerously skinny.
The story of the Levite is just not merely about violence; it’s in regards to the failure of accountability. It’s a couple of man who, confronted with hazard, selected the better path of sacrificing one other reasonably than confronting the threat.
Nigeria at this time stands at the same ethical crossroads.
The continued existence of territories the place state authority is weak or non-existent undermines the very essence of governance. The Structure is evident: the first goal of presidency is the safety and welfare of the individuals. When residents can not journey safely inside their very own nation, that mandate is essentially compromised.
The names are many, and the tales are painfully acquainted: the kidnapped schoolgirls of Chibok, the lengthy captivity of Leah Sharibu, the repeated kidnappings in Niger, Kogi, and Kwara States, and the numerous unnamed victims whose ordeals in Zamfara, Sokoto, Borno, Yobe and even in Southern Nigeria by no means make nationwide headlines.
Every case reinforces a rising sense that Nigerians are being left to fend for themselves.
But, even within the bleakness of Judges 19, the story in the end provoked outrage that led to a reckoning. It compelled a nation to confront its personal ethical decay.
That’s maybe the lesson Nigeria should now embrace.
Past political rhetoric there’s an pressing want for a reassertion of state authority, a restoration of public belief, and a transparent demonstration that the lives of residents are usually not expendable.
Safety is just not a favour; it’s an obligation which President Tinubu should assert and with it depart a optimistic legacy that his management is just not about consolation however about accountability. He ought to present that accountability to enthrone a optimistic legacy and never the adulations that come from current day followers like Akpabio who like many political actors would shift to the following authorities in energy.
SPONSORED