The Tragedy of Nigeria and the Tears of Michael Oyedokun’s Family
Insecurity in Nigeria and Rising Human Cost
By Pelumi Olajengbesi Esq
Insecurity in Nigeria is gradually becoming a society dangerously comfortable with pain and human suffering. The country is slowly drifting backwards into a brutal age where life is becoming short, uncertain, cruel and frighteningly cheap. A nation once built on hope and communal humanity is gradually losing its moral sensitivity while fear, bloodshed and despair now compete daily with entertainment for public attention.
Last night the world of sports stood still in celebration over Arsenal. Across Nigeria despite pain, hunger, hardship, insecurity in Nigeria and economic exhaustion, millions joined the frenzy. It was another “normal” night in a country bleeding from every part of its existence.
The Tragedy of Michael Oyedokun’s Family
But somewhere in Oyo State a family was thrown into darkness, anguish and irreversible pain. The family of Michael Oyedokun was not celebrating. They were mourning. They were confronted with the unbearable reality that their loved one had been brutally murdered and beheaded in a country that increasingly appears incapable of protecting its own citizens. At that moment nothing mattered except grief, fear, confusion and unbearable pain.
This is the tragedy of Nigeria, a country where celebration and sorrow now coexist side by side in terrifying proportions. A country where some citizens laugh while others bury their loved ones abandoned by the very system established to protect them. A country where insecurity, violence, poverty, injustice and institutional failure have become recurring realities of everyday life.
Yet as a people we still struggle to confront the painful truth that the national crisis is fundamentally a failure of leadership, governance and national conscience. Even more disturbing is the fact that many leaders still behave as though tragedy belongs only to ordinary people. But the frightening truth remains that Nigeria can fail anybody.
In Nigeria tragedy can arrive without warning. One moment a person is alive with dreams, responsibilities, ambitions and hope. The next moment that life becomes another headline, another viral story, another temporary outrage in a nation already overwhelmed by too many unresolved crises.
A Nation Losing Sensitivity to Pain
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of all this is how quickly society moves on. Another football match will come. Another political debate will trend. Another social media controversy will dominate public attention. Another scandal will replace the last one. But for the family left behind life may never truly return to normal again.
Nigeria needs healing. Not just economic healing or political healing but moral, emotional and institutional healing. We are gradually becoming a society losing its sensitivity to pain where bloodshed no longer shocks people deeply enough and where citizens increasingly live under fear, uncertainty, hopelessness and emotional exhaustion.
There is something profoundly wrong with a nation where people no longer feel protected by the institutions created to defend them. There is something dangerously broken about a society where human life no longer carries the dignity and value it deserves.
We cannot continue to normalise violence, insecurity, bloodshed and the collapse of public trust. We cannot continue to treat these tragedies as ordinary incidents citizens should simply accept as part of national life. A nation that no longer values human life cannot genuinely progress.
Nigeria’s Need for Institutional Reform and Compassion
Nigeria desperately needs leaders with conscience, institutions that function effectively, security agencies that are proactive and accountable and a justice system that is swift, visible and dependable. Above all we must rebuild compassion as a people because when citizens become emotionally disconnected from the pain of others humanity itself slowly begins to die.
Pelumi Olajengbesi Esq., a legal practitioner, writes from Abuja.