Ashes Within The Silence

They burned them alive: and Nigeria watched.
Flames danced in the moonlight where lullabies once lived.
This was not a riot, not a bandit’s whim:
It was organized horror;
a cold, calculated genocide.
They came when dreams were deepest,
locked the doors, poured the fuel,
and watched men, women, children, even unborn voices
turn to smoke.
This is not a clash. This is not a misunderstanding.
This is the massacre they want us to forget;
but we remember every ember, every name turned to ash.

What crime did they commit?
They were poor. They were farmers.
They tilled the land, raised children, prayed to God.
They wore no uniform, carried no arms,
Yet their reward was slaughter.
From farms to graves, from homes to mass pits,
Benue is being erased,
village by village,
child by child.
And the nation watches with tired eyes,
counting silence as strategy.

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Two hundred dead, zero justice:
Who owns this blood? Who names these graves?
Even the chapel could not shield them;
even the altar bore witness to the horror.
We no dey kill cow like this,
but see how them kill our people.
Not even the babies were spared;
not even the ones yet to cry.
Dead by midnight,
forgotten by morning,
they rise now as ghosts in our headlines;
whispered, then dismissed.

If this happened in Lagos, in Abuja, in London,
CNN would break the silence.
But this is Benue,
so they tell us,
“Move on.”
Where is the President?
Where are the generals we pay?
Where are the condolences wrapped in action?
Where is the weight of the federal gaze?
How many times shall we bury our own
before anyone raises a flag at half-mast?

We will not move on.
We demand more than mourning,
We demand answers.
We demand arrests, not rhetoric.
We demand a national day of mourning,
not another empty press release.
We demand a state of emergency,
not another delegation sent to shake hands with the dead.
We demand international inquiry, humanitarian presence,
witnesses to truth,
because we are tired of being our own undertakers.

Let it be known:
Benue is not a graveyard.
Nigeria is not a nation of disposable lives.
We will not let the land swallow our names.
We are tired of mass burials,
of condolences with no consequence,
of grief weaponized as routine.
To be silent now is to dig another grave.
To be neutral now is to be complicit.

If Benue were oil, would you have saved us?
Would fighter jets have flown?
Would sirens have screamed louder than wails?
Ask yourself, Nigeria.
Ask yourself, Africa.
This blood cries louder than bullets.
This ash will not wash off your hands.
Rise, Nigeria.
Rise, Africa.
Let justice roll like thunder
before the next child is swallowed by flame.

© 2025 Divramredje Lawrence Efeturi
All Rights Reserved. ®