A chilling paralysis has gripped the Nigerian soul, where the massacre of 170 innocents in Kwara evokes only a shrug, and citizens trade their birthright for the crumbs of survival.

Why do we accept the unacceptable? This is the central interrogation of our time. It is not merely fear; it is a spiritual and psychological surrender. As Dr. Erwin Lutzer observed, economic crises are gifts to tyrants. In Nigeria, the weaponization of poverty has birthed a "national spirit of docility"—a collective coma where the populace watches its own destruction with indifferent eyes.

The Anatomy of Silence

The recent slaughter in a Kwara village, where 170 lives were extinguished, passed with barely a whimper of national outrage. We have become numb to the sight of blood. This apathy is not accidental; it is engineered. The ruling class has mastered the art of keeping the populace in a state of perpetual survival mode, where the struggle for the next meal overrides the demand for justice.

• The Hunger Weapon: By weaponizing economic dependence, the political elite ensures that resistance is too costly for the average citizen.
• The Religious Narcotic: Corrupt theology tells the poor to leave vengeance to God, effectively disarming the civic mechanism of accountability.

The Path to Awakening

Ayo Akerele’s diagnosis is brutal but necessary: A regional government with a docile people is no better than a unitary state with the same rot. The system will not fix itself. Until Nigerians excise this spirit of passivity and reclaim their agency, the looting will continue, the killings will escalate, and the giant of Africa will remain a kneeling dwarf.

"The only thing men do not learn from history is that they do not learn from history," Hegel warned. Nigeria is currently proving him right, writing its obituary in the ink of silence.