Editorial: Tinubu's Airport Condolence to Jos Massacre Victims

There are moments in the life of a nation when symbolism matters as much as substance. This was one of them. And President Bola Tinubu failed it; comprehensively, unmistakably, and, it must be said, unforgivably. A massacre occurred. Men, women, and children were butchered in Angwan Rukuba. The nation recoiled in horror. What was required was not merely a presidential visit, but a presidential presence - physical, emotional, unmistakable. A leader walking the blood-soaked earth, standing amidst the ruins, confronting the consequences of his government’s failure to secure its citizens. Instead, Nigeria got an airport performance.

 

The President did not go to the victims. The victims were brought to him - displaced once again, this time not by violence, but by the chilling convenience of power. A grieving mother, who had buried her child days earlier, was made to travel to an airport lounge to receive condolences. If governance has a moral nadir, this surely qualifies. The excuses offered are as revealing as they are inadequate. Logistics, scheduling conflicts, runway limitations. One might as well add poor weather and inconvenient daylight. These are not explanations; they are evasions dressed up as inevitabilities. Leadership is tested precisely when circumstances are inconvenient. If empathy must wait upon flight schedules, then it is not empathy at all - merely protocol.

 

More troubling still is the message this episode sends, not in words but in posture. When a President cannot risk a 40-minute journey into his own territory, he is not merely avoiding danger; he is acknowledging it. Publicly. Visibly. Catastrophically. It is an admission that the Nigerian state does not control its own terrain. And if the state does not control the terrain, it cannot protect its citizens. This is the quiet terror beneath the outrage. Not just that the President failed to visit, but that he could not. Or would not. The distinction hardly matters.

 

For years, Nigerians have endured a grim cycle: massacre, condemnation, committee, repetition. Each iteration drains meaning from the last. Now, even the rituals of empathy are being hollowed out. Condolences delivered from airport lounges. Security briefings that promise everything and change nothing. Surveillance cameras proposed for landscapes where machetes and bullets still rule.

Cameras do not stop killers. Committees do not deter militias. And carefully worded statements do not resurrect the dead.

 

What remains, then, is the citizen, increasingly alone, increasingly aware, increasingly forced to confront a dreadful arithmetic: that the state’s capacity to protect is not merely weak, but uncertain. From that realization flows a dangerous logic. If the state cannot guarantee security, citizens will seek to provide it themselves. Vigilantism, self-defense networks, militias — the vocabulary of state failure is already expanding across Nigeria’s troubled regions. It is not born of rebellion, but of necessity. And necessity, once entrenched, is difficult to reverse.

 

President Tinubu’s airport visit will be remembered not for what was said, but for what was avoided. Not for the promises made, but for the ground left untrodden. Leadership, at its core, is about showing up; especially when it is difficult, dangerous, or inconvenient. On that most basic measure, this presidency did not merely stumble; it recoiled. And a nation already bleeding has taken note.