By  Kenneth Nkadi

We are living in a time of loud explosions and quiet implosions. The recent carnage in Maiduguri and the ongoing mayhem in the Middle East, remind us, again, of echoes we once hoped were buried in the past. But history, like dry gunpowder, has a way of waiting—patient, silent—until the smallest spark finds it. And when it does, the blast is never just physical. It is psychological. It tears through buildings, yes, but also through memory, through hope, through the fragile architecture of ordinary life.

In the aftermath of the recent explosions in Maiduguri in mid-March of 2026, the pattern felt familiar. The smoke clears, the dead are counted, the wounded are consoled, and the living are instructed—again—to endure. Endure what? Endure how long? And to what end?

Because endurance, in our time, has become a national policy. Closer inspection reveals that this is not an isolated Nigerian tragedy but part of a wider geography of grief. In the broader Middle East, the geography of grief has expanded far beyond the Mediterranean coast, shifting into a terrifying new phase of regional escalation that ignited in late February 2026. The casualty numbers once again defy human comprehension, as the conflict has rapidly metastasised across multiple borders in just a few weeks.

In those regions, as in ours, the language of war has become disturbingly routine—“precision strikes,” “collateral damage,” “defensive response.” But beneath these sterile phrases are lives interrupted, families erased, and generations shaped by trauma. Children grow up learning the vocabulary of survival before they learn the grammar of hope.

And then, back home, the echoes return—louder because they are ours. On March 16, 2026, Maiduguri was jolted by coordinated suicide bombings targeting civilian locations, including the Monday Market and areas around the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. At least 23 people were killed, and over 140 injured. These were not abstract casualties. They were traders, patients, passersby—people engaged in the ordinary business of living until violence intruded.

We were told, not too long ago, that this insurgency had been “technically defeated.” Yet here we are again, counting bodies, revisiting grief, and rehearsing responses that have become almost ritualistic.

The response from leadership follows a script that is by now deeply familiar. Our President, like his predecessors in similar moments, issued marching orders: security chiefs were to relocate to the affected region. It is a gesture we have seen repeated across states—Kwara in 2025, parts of the North-West, and now again in Borno.

And for a fleeting moment, it feels like action. But only for a fleeting moment, because relocation is not a strategy. It is theatre. It is the movement of authority without necessarily the deployment of solutions. If proximity to crisis were enough, Nigeria would have long secured itself into stability.

One is then tempted—perhaps out of frustration more than satire—to imagine a different approach. What if we could clone these security chiefs? Multiply them, replicate them, station them in every local government area across the country. After all, insecurity has decentralised itself. It has learned mobility, adaptation, surprise. Why should our response remain centralised and reactive?

Picture it: a Chief in every one of the 774 local governments. Permanent presence. Immediate response. No need for emergency relocation because no place is left unattended.
It sounds absurd. But is it more absurd than believing that moving the same officials from one crisis zone to another will outpace a threat that has already mastered dispersion?

The problem is not where the chiefs are. It is what the system enables them to do. Strategy cannot be replaced by symbolism. Structure cannot be substituted with spectacle.

Explosions capture attention. They dominate headlines. They force reactions. But implosions are quieter and far more dangerous. They occur within institutions that have lost coherence, within communities that have lost trust, and within citizens who are slowly losing faith.

This is the deeper crisis.The Nigerian psyche is under pressure—stretched between repeated trauma and repeated assurances. Every explosion erodes confidence. Every unfulfilled promise deepens skepticism. Every call to endure without a clear path forward begins to sound less like leadership and more like resignation.

We are told that hardship is temporary. That suffering is part of a refining process. That something good will emerge from all this. But human beings do not live on promises alone.

They require evidence, direction, and above all, honesty.

There is a cost to constant endurance. It breeds fatigue. It normalises suffering. It lowers the threshold of expectation. A people trained only to endure may eventually forget how to demand accountability. And yet, there are those who insist: if you do not ask the people to endure, what is the alternative? Should they be told to abandon hope?

No. The alternative is not despair. It is truth. Truth does not flatter. It does not console for the sake of quiet. It does not mask uncertainty with grand declarations. Truth confronts reality as it is and invites responsibility where it belongs.

There is also a moral dimension to this conversation, one that becomes particularly poignant as we remember the significance of Good Friday in the Christian calendar. The suffering of Jesus Christ is the ultimate model of redemptive suffering. But what gave that suffering meaning was not the pain itself—it was the certainty of its purpose. The Cross pointed unmistakably to the Resurrection.

That is what made it bearable. That is what made it transformative. Without redemption, suffering is merely prolonged pain.

To continually ask a people to endure without articulating—clearly and convincingly—the path to resolution is to risk turning suffering into a hollow ritual. It becomes less of a sacrifice and more of a sentence.

Even Christ did not deceive His followers about the cost of discipleship. He spoke plainly of the cross before the crown. He did not promise comfort where there would be conflict. He told the truth. That is what leadership requires.

In our context, however, there is often a reversal. The crown is promised while the cross is ignored—or worse, normalised. Citizens are told of future prosperity while navigating present insecurity. They are urged to remain hopeful while evidence remains scarce. Hope, without structure, becomes fragile. It begins to crack under the weight of repeated disappointment.

The danger, then, is not only in the explosions that shake our cities, but in the implosions that quietly take root within the national consciousness. A nation can rebuild from physical destruction. It is far more difficult to recover from the erosion of trust.

We stand at a delicate intersection—between blasts and breakdowns, between what is happening around us and what is happening within us. The challenge is not merely to respond to violence when it occurs, but to build systems that prevent its recurrence. Not merely to relocate authority, but to reimagine it. Not merely to call for endurance, but to justify it.

This requires more than movement. More than messaging. More than metaphors.

It requires courage—the courage to admit what is not working. It requires clarity—the ability to define a path beyond crisis management. And it requires truth—the willingness to speak honestly, even when that honesty is uncomfortable.

Explosions may be inevitable in a fractured world. But implosions—the collapse of hope, of trust, of national will—are preventable. And that is where the real work lies.

Because in the end, a people can survive the noise of explosions. What they may not survive is the silence that follows—when they begin, quietly and collectively, to stop believing.

Fr. Nkadi, O.P. wrote from opshotacademy.com; he can be reachedvia: [email protected]