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There is something fundamentally wrong with us as a people.
Three Fulani individuals were stopped and kllled; in retaliation, their own people went to a beer parlor and kllled 10 Berom people.
Following this, a group of Berom youths blocked a federal road, stopped a car, and klled three people who were not Fulani, but Hausa Muslims traveling to Pankshin for business.
I condemn, in its entirety, the actions of all parties involved. But most importantly, what was the fault of the individuals simply going about their business?
On the other hand, 34 people were kllled in Kebbi, 50 in Zamfara, about 12 in Bauchi, villages were ransacked, 70 were kĺlled in Kwara, and more than 300 people across the Northern region were kidnapped.
Yet, the most talked-about and aired issue is the one from Plateau. Do you know why? We only value life based on the religion attached to the person involved.
People are not even angry because of the Fulani who were the first victims, nor are they primarily worried about the 10 Berom men; people are angry because of the Muslims kĺlled.
That tells a different story. When people die in other parts of the country where there is less religious tension, we act as if their lives do not matter. In contrast, in a religiously tense axis, people react as if they will burn down the country.
The central fueling factor is the manipulation of religion around politics and conflict. When lives are lost without a religious coloration, many lose their sense of humanity and often do nothing or quickly let it go. But the moment religion is attached, all hell breaks loose.
If we were truly human—quantitatively speaking, the number of people lost in Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Bauchi, Kwara, and Niger should trigger us more than those from Plateau State.
But because the Plateau incident has more tension and religious coloration, we are more interested in it.
That tells us exactly who we are as a people: we place the division of beliefs above the loss of human lives.
While loss of live is totally not acceptable regardless of whose life is taken, our reactions tell a silently different story.
Ultimately, this selective outrage reveals a grim of truth: we have replaced Universal Humanity with Tribal Solidarity. We do not mourn the 'Self' in the 'Other'; we only mourn the 'Other' when they look or pray like the 'Self.'
When we weight the value of a life by the name of a belief or the dialect of a tongue, we commit a second murder against the victims—we strip them of their personhood and turn them into political tokens.
Until we reach a stage where the blood of a stranger in Zamfara is as heavy in our hearts as the blood of a brother in Plateau, our "morality" is nothing but a mask for our prejudices. We are not yet a nation of humans; we are a collection of mirrors, only capable of reflecting our own biases.
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