It is another sad day in Nigeria. Another dark day. His only sin was that he woke up and went to work, something he had been doing for years. If he had known what that fateful day had in stock for him, he would have stayed in bed. But he did not. He had no way of knowing that the monster we thought lived only in the forests of the north had finally built a hut in the south west.
Michael Oyedokun a schoolteacher left his house in Oyo State to go to work. He did not carry a gun. He was not a soldier marching to a battlefield. He was not a criminal fleeing justice. He was not a politician with enemies or political detractors.
He was a simple teacher, a man who carried books instead of bullets. His daily assignment was to help shape young minds and help children find a future brighter than the present darkness surrounding Nigeria. He taught mathematics, a major subject needed to birth the next generation of engineers and pilots, doctors and nurses, tech pros and climate change experts.
But before the day ended, terrorists reportedly captured him and hours later, ended his life in the most gruesome manner. The darkness of Nigeria consumed him , leaving all of us bewildered.
Mr. Oyedokun’s only offence was going to work. That single sentence alone should break the heart of every decent human being.
In sane societies, teachers are protected because they build civilisation. Nations honour teachers because they prepare the next generation. Didn’t we all grow up in communities that respected them because every doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, governor and president once sat before a teacher in a classroom?
But today’s Nigeria is beheading its teachers. Today’s Nigeria is not safe, not for pupils or their teachers. How did we arrive at this cruel, sorry pass, this evil junction of blood where a man can leave his home in the morning to educate children and never return alive? What kind of people does that make us?
As far as this girl is concerned, this is no longer just insecurity. It is organised cruelty. It is the systematic destruction of human dignity. It is evil in human form. Those we call criminals are demons, monsters. Or is it not beyond frightening wickedness that there are human beings who can hold another human being down for his head to be severed as though his life meant absolutely nothing? Doesn’t that level of brutality belong in nightmares, in horror films? Why then has it become a recurring reality in Nigeria?
It is easy to call out President Tinubu. It is convenient to blame this on Governor Seyi Makinde. But let us ask ourselves: Who are the people providing cover, funding and guns for these demons? Somewhere, as you read this, someone is leaking, selling sensitive information to kidnappers. Someone is selling them daily supplies. Someone is making tons of money from this evil enterprise. They know people will die, blood will be shed, yet they don’t care.
What kind of darkness possesses man that makes him comfortable spilling innocent blood? What happened to mercy? What happened to conscience? What happened to humanity?
Teacher Michael was someone’s son, a husband, a father, a breadwinner, a family’s hope until his head was taken to prove a point.
This is the kind of tragedy Nigeria now produces with such frightening regularity and we are gradually becoming emotionally numb, exhausted.Every week comes with fresh horror.
A farmer goes to his farm and never returns.
A trader’s blood is splattered on her wares in the market.
A nursing mother is abducted.
Students disappear on highways.
Youth Corps members are kidnapped in busloads.
Worshippers are shipped off in the middle of church service.
Villages are invaded in the middle of the night.
Children watch helplessly as their parents are slaughtered before them.
Entire communities sleep with fear wrapped around their throats.
And now, a teacher has been beheaded simply because he went to work.
The dead are almost never the powerful. They are ordinary Nigerians struggling honestly to survive. The victims are the people who still believe in hard work. People who wake up every morning hoping to feed their families legitimately. People who still believe dignity can come from labour instead of crime.
But in today’s Nigeria, honesty itself seems endangered. What are we going to do?
The tragedy of this latest killing becomes even heavier when one remembers how poorly teachers are already treated in the country. Many work under terrible conditions. Poor salaries. Broken classrooms. Leaking roofs. Inadequate teaching materials. Yet they continue showing up every morning because they have to, someone has to .
Society hands children over to teachers daily with one request: help shape the future.
And this is how Nigeria rewards one of them. By allowing him to become another corpse in the growing cemetery of national sorrow.
Somewhere sadly as you read this, Teacher Michael’s wife is staring blankly into darkness, unable to understand how life changed so brutally, so quickly. The children are waiting for a father who will never walk through the door again. Somewhere, his relatives are crying and asking questions nobody can answer.
How does one explain this kind of death to a child? How does the Oyedokun family recover from this horror?
How do communities heal after repeated exposure to terror? The emotional destruction caused by terrorism goes far beyond the bodies left behind. Violence destroys the invisible structures holding us together. It destroys confidence. It destroys trust. It destroys peace of mind. It destroys hope.
