What happened on the Nsukka Adani Road days after Christmas 2025 did not shock anyone who has been paying attention. A fully loaded bus was ...
What happened on the Nsukka Adani Road days after Christmas 2025 did not shock anyone who has been paying attention. A fully loaded bus was intercepted, passengers and the driver marched into the bush, families were thrown into panic, and authorities were slow to speak. In the Southeast, this kind of news now travels faster than reassurance. Roads once considered safe have become corridors of dread. People leave home praying not to become the next unnamed victims of a system that no longer guarantees the most basic protection: the right to move freely and return alive despite the ongoing US intervention.
This incident did not happen in isolation. It sits inside a wider Nigerian nightmare that has become routine. From Enugu to Imo, Anambra to Abia, kidnappings, targeted killings, night raids and arbitrary arrests have steadily replaced normal life. Markets close early, night travel has vanished, and Christmas, once a season of reunion, has turned into a period of heightened fear. Families now count their loved ones before and after every journey.
At the same time, Nigerians watched a troubling contradiction play out on the national stage. Following US airstrikes on terrorist targets in the North, statements attributed to prominent cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, warning of consequences and retaliation, circulated widely, alongside threats from armed groups promising revenge. Soon after, bandit attacks reportedly intensified in several northern communities. Yet there was no public interrogation, no visible arrest, no urgent questioning from security agencies. The message many citizens received was chilling: some voices can issue warnings that shake the nation without consequence, while others are crushed for speaking far less.
Contrast this with the continued detention of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and many other Biafran agitators. Regardless of where one stands politically, the disparity is impossible to ignore. While individuals associated rightly or wrongly with terror-linked rhetoric are treated with caution and dialogue, separatist voices from the Southeast are met with overwhelming force, prolonged detention and severe punishment. To many, this does not look like justice; it looks like selective enforcement of the law.
Then there is the reality of Tiger Base, a name that now inspires fear rather than security. Over the past days, especially between December 24 and 26, reports of mass arrests, torture, extortion and prolonged detention of innocent youths, mostly Biafrans, have flooded communities. Homes raided without warrants, young men taken without explanation, families left searching in silence. Complaints are dismissed, lawyers frustrated, and victims returned broken or not returned at all. This is no longer about policing; it is about terror wearing a uniform.
In Nigeria, beyond the Southeast, Christians and other civilians are facing severe insecurity. Churches have been attacked, worshippers killed, villages sacked, and priests kidnapped. In the North, entire communities have been displaced. In the Middle Belt, farmers are being slaughtered in their fields. In the South, abductions have become a lucrative business. What connects these tragic events is not solely religion or ethnicity, but a state that has failed to act decisively and fairly for decades.
The consequences of this failure are already unfolding. Trust in the Nigerian state has collapsed. Citizens now fear both criminals and those meant to protect them. When people believe the law is a weapon used selectively, they retreat into ethnic and regional identities for survival. This is how nations unravel, not through loud announcements, but through daily injustices that convince people they no longer belong.
This is why calls for restructuring, separation, or outright independence, especially Biafran independence, are growing louder, not quieter. Many now argue that fighting insurgency while forcing deeply incompatible regions to remain under one broken structure will only produce worse violence. A country that cannot guarantee equal justice, equal protection, and equal dignity to its people is already divided in practice, even if it pretends to be united on paper.
The way out of this crisis cannot be cosmetic military operations alone. It requires confronting the truth that Nigeria’s centralised system has failed catastrophically. Either there must be a genuine, negotiated redefinition of the country that allows regions real autonomy and self-determination, or peaceful separation must be considered a means of survival. Suppressing these conversations with arrests and bullets will not end terrorism; it will multiply it.
People are not demanding division because they hate others. They are demanding it because they are tired of burying their dead, tired of raising children in fear, tired of being treated as expendable. When a state becomes a source of danger rather than a refuge, the people will seek safety elsewhere, by voice, by vote, or by history itself.
Nigeria is standing on borrowed time. Ignoring these warnings will not preserve unity; it will only guarantee a more violent collapse. More police brutality on the helpless people. More severe consequences resulting from a forced/dishonest amalgamation, whose agreement has long expired, etc.
The time to divide Nigeria has long gone, and this is another time for the restoration of the independent Nation of Biafra. This is the only true way to achieve a terrorism-free society in the region.
Written by
Nwachineke
Edited by
Chidi Ibe
For States Media Team
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