Bible’s saddest story plays out in Nigeria, by Emmanuel Aziken

Earlier this week, I read what many consider as about the most saddening story in the Bible.

It is a story so dark that it forces a painful reflection on the depths to which human society can descend when authority collapses and morality is abandoned. It is the account of the Levite and his concubine in Judges 19, a grim episode set in a time when, as the scripture repeatedly emphasises, “there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

The story is brutal. A travelling Levite, seeking shelter for the night, is hosted by an elderly man in the town of Gibeah. But the night descends into horror when a mob of homosexuals surrounds the house, demanding to violate the visitor. In a shocking attempt to appease the attackers, the host offers his own virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine. What follows is a moral collapse of staggering proportions: the Levite himself pushes his concubine out to the mob. She is assaulted through the night, abandoned, and ultimately dies from the ordeal.

It is a story of cowardice, of leadership failure, and of a society that had lost its moral compass.

It is also, disturbingly, a story that resonates with present-day Nigeria.

That connection became painfully clear with the widely circulated video of a student of the University of Jos, brutalised by bandits along the road between Plateau and Kaduna States. The young man’s cries, his helplessness, and the utter absence of rescue encapsulate a reality that many Nigerians now live with daily: bandits on rampage.

His ordeal is not isolated. Across the country, from the forests of the North-West to the highways of the North-Central, citizens are abducted, beaten, and sometimes killed, not by foreign invaders, but by criminal elements operating boldly within Nigeria’s borders. The most troubling question this raises is as simple as it is profound: is there truly a government in charge?

In the biblical account, the chaos was explained by the absence of a king. Today, Nigeria has a president, governors, lawmakers, and a vast security architecture. Yet, in many parts of the country now described as “ungoverned spaces,” the authority of the state appears either absent or ineffective. Bandits and insurgents impose their own rules, extract ransoms, and determine the fate of citizens.

This is where the parallel becomes uncomfortable.

Just as the Levite, entrusted with responsibility, chose self-preservation over protection and pushed his concubine into harm’s way, there is a growing perception that Nigeria’s ruling class has similarly abandoned the citizenry, leaving ordinary people exposed to violence while those in power remain insulated.

The symbolism is stark.

The citizen becomes the concubine, sacrificed to appease forces that the state either cannot or will not confront decisively.

The timing of the UNIJOS student’s ordeal adds another layer of irony. The video circulated around the same period Senate President Godswill Akpabio suggested that insecurity in the country is being exaggerated or even orchestrated by political opponents ahead of the 2027 elections. In effect, the suffering of citizens is reduced to a tool in political contestation.

Such a position is not just dismissive, it is dangerous.

The role of the legislature, especially under the leadership of the Senate President, is to provide oversight, interrogate executive action, and ensure that government responds effectively to the needs of the people. To downplay the scale of insecurity is to risk normalising it.

And therein lies the deeper tragedy.

When leaders begin to rationalise or politicise suffering, the line between governance and abandonment becomes dangerously thin.

The story of the Levite is not merely about violence; it is about the failure of responsibility. It is about a man who, faced with danger, chose the easier path of sacrificing another rather than confronting the threat.

Nigeria today stands at a similar moral crossroads.

The continued existence of territories where state authority is weak or non-existent undermines the very essence of governance. The Constitution is clear: the primary purpose of government is the security and welfare of the people. When citizens cannot travel safely within their own country, that mandate is fundamentally compromised.

The names are many, and the stories are painfully familiar: the abducted schoolgirls of Chibok, the long captivity of Leah Sharibu, the repeated kidnappings in Niger, Kogi, and Kwara States, and the countless unnamed victims whose ordeals in Zamfara, Sokoto, Borno, Yobe and even in Southern Nigeria never make national headlines.

Each case reinforces a growing sense that Nigerians are being left to fend for themselves.

Yet, even in the bleakness of Judges 19, the story ultimately provoked outrage that led to a reckoning. It forced a nation to confront its own moral decay.

That is perhaps the lesson Nigeria must now embrace.

Beyond political rhetoric there is an urgent need for a reassertion of state authority, a restoration of public trust, and a clear demonstration that the lives of citizens are not expendable.

Security is not a favour; it is an obligation which President Tinubu must assert and with it leave a positive legacy that his leadership is not about comfort but about responsibility. He should show that responsibility to enthrone a positive legacy and not the adulations that come from present day fans like Akpabio who like many political actors would shift to the next government in power.

The post Bible’s saddest story plays out in Nigeria, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.