Systems that ensure no one answers for the dead.
Impunity by Design: Why the Killing Didn’t Stop
Nigeria’s dead do not vanish on their own. They are processed—by paperwork that never leaves a desk, by inquiries that never mature into indictments, and by a national conversation that prefers geopolitics to governance. Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the architecture that converts mass harm into administrative noise did not dissolve; it cohered. And when The New York Times trained its lens abroad—on Washington’s motives, on diplomatic atmospherics—it performed a familiar sleight of hand: it framed a domestic accountability crisis as a foreign policy drama, giving the most proximate duty-bearers room to breathe (compare the government’s own crime and security claims with independent conflict tallies that show the violence persisted, diversified, and migrated; Ministry of Police Affairs, 2024, 2025; ACLED, 2024). The effect is subtle and devastating. It is also measurable.
The attrition tree: where justice dies
Start at the scene of a massacre and walk the case forward. A First Information Report (FIR) is opened; investigators assemble diaries and witness statements; the file is sent for legal advice; charges are drafted—or not. What happens next, too often, is procedural attrition: nolle prosequi, struck-out counts for want of diligent prosecution, “further investigation” that loops for years. Each stage has a custodian. Each custodian has a clock. And in Nigeria’s recent record, those clocks were not kept (Human Rights Watch, 2025; Amnesty International, 2024).
Independent monitors document the result with pitiless regularity. Human Rights Watch catalogues unresolved airstrike casualties and village attacks in which questions outlive victims (Human Rights Watch, 2024, 2025). Amnesty International traces survivor testimony of war-related abuses without corresponding remedy pathways (Amnesty International, 2024). The U.S. State Department’s 2024 report, while diplomatic in tone, records structural weaknesses in investigations and accountability outcomes (United States Department of State, 2024). When a government insists “investigations are ongoing,” these dossiers provide the counter: they show how long and how little “ongoing” has achieved.
The institutions that didn’t bite
Police homicide/CT units. Nigeria’s policing has been asked to fight complex, networked violence with brittle tools. Official pressers tout “crime statistics,” but the state’s own portals deliver aggregates with little case-level transparency—no prosecution follow-through, no conviction cohorts, no time-to-charge dashboards (Ministry of Police Affairs, 2024, 2025). In parallel, conflict-event datasets continue to log lethal incidents across the North West and Middle Belt that exceed what those aggregates would lead a reader to believe (ACLED, 2024; UNIDIR, 2024; International Crisis Group, 2020). The gap is not merely methodological; it is institutional. Without statutory clocks and public reporting on investigative milestones, delay becomes a default defense.
DPP/MOJ and the AGF. Prosecutorial discretion is essential to justice—and a recurring tunnel to impunity when it is unreviewable. In emblematic attacks sampled across the northwest and north-central corridors, files stall between police and ministry; charges are framed narrowly; or courts are starved of the diligence that sustains counts to judgment. Comparative baselines matter: peer democracies publish prosecution and conviction rates after mass-casualty events; Nigeria does not. Where the Administration of Criminal Justice Acts/Laws (ACJA/ACJLs) should have created discipline, implementation remains uneven (Administration of Criminal Justice Monitoring Committee [ACJMC], n.d.; British Council—RoLAC, 2023; “Nigerian Monitoring Service,” 2024).
NHRC. The National Human Rights Commission has the mandate—and too little muscle. Its 2022 report shows petitions, dialogues, and recommendations; what it cannot compel, under statute, is enforcement (National Human Rights Commission, 2022). In a system where ministries can ignore quasi-judicial recommendations without reputational or fiscal penalty, soft law becomes soft landing.
National Assembly oversight and Public Accounts. On paper, the legislature is the grand inquest of the republic. In practice, committee calendars move; hearings are announced; reports are filed; and little binds the executive to corrective action. Order papers record meetings, but the sanction architecture for ignoring Public Accounts Committee findings is anaemic (House of Representatives, 2024; Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2021). The Auditor-General’s reports are blunter. They list non-compliance and internal control weaknesses across ministries and agencies—including those tasked with security and public welfare—pointing to “irregular expenditures,” “unretired advances,” and “unsupported payments” (Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation [OAuGF], 2024, 2025). When audit queries become annual literature rather than litigation, a culture of consequence cannot form.
NEMA and the humanitarian–governance hinge. In a functioning accountability regime, a mass-casualty attack triggers immediate humanitarian surge, public situational reporting, and transparent funding flows. NEMA’s own situation reports capture response steps and challenges, but the larger humanitarian ledger—OCHA’s Humanitarian Needs and Response Plans—documents chronic underfunding and unmet need across precisely the locations where violence spikes (National Emergency Management Agency, 2024; Humanitarian Response/OCHA, 2025). That gap is not accidental; it is a budgeting and prioritization choice with legal implications for the right to life and dignity.
Corrections. The back end of justice is as revealing as the front end. If offenders are truly being investigated, charged, and sentenced, prison and non-custodial statistics would reflect it. The Correctional Service’s portal offers totals and categories but not the granular connectivity to high-profile atrocity cases needed to rebut systemic impunity claims (Nigerian Correctional Service, n.d.). In the absence of that connectivity, confidence collapses.
How governors reproduced the pattern
Impunity is fractal. State houses mirror Aso Rock: commissions of inquiry instead of criminal prosecutions, “stakeholder dialogues” instead of indictments, emergency allocations that never arrive at clinics. Crisis Group’s analysis of the North West tracks the political economy of banditry: revenue streams, bargains, and the state’s oscillation between force and accommodation (International Crisis Group, 2020). UNIDIR’s community-level interviews confirm what victims already know: government response is intermittent, justice is rare, and non-state authority fills the vacuum (UNIDIR, 2024). When the federal center normalizes delay or opacity, state executives learn the lesson.
Read also: NYT Framing, Tinubu’s $9m, And Nigeria’s Silence—Part 6
The PR displacement effect under Tinubu
Under President Tinubu, Abuja did not invent narrative management; it professionalized it. FARA files show paid strategic communications and lobbying buys in Washington at the same time national systems struggled to investigate and prosecute atrocity, fund the humanitarian baseline, or restore basic service functionality (see Part 6). The symmetry is intolerable: government found cash to explain Nigeria abroad while domestic dockets for mass death gathered dust. This is not a metaphysical critique; it is a governance equation. Each month a communications contract was serviced while a prosecution clock lapsed, a signal was sent about priorities. When a leading U.S. newspaper centers its story on American politics rather than Nigerian duties, that signal amplifies. The result is the PR displacement effect: public energy and elite attention flow to narrative management, not to the untheatrical grind of evidence, indictments, and judgments (contrast the fanfare of “crime statistics” releases with the quiet persistence of conflict-event data and rights-group case files; Ministry of Police Affairs, 2024, 2025; ACLED, 2024; Human Rights Watch, 2024, 2025; Amnesty International, 2024).
Anticipated pushback—and the evidence answers
“Investigations are ongoing.” Publish the clocks. For each emblematic attack, list the FIR date; date file was sent to DPP; date charges were filed (or explanation for delay); hearing dates; judgment; restitution. Where legal time limits under ACJA/ACJLs were breached, say so (ACJMC, n.d.; British Council—RoLAC, 2023). If the government cannot provide these clocks, the claim fails on its own terms.
“Security matters are sensitive.” Redaction is a tool, not a burial shroud. The State Department’s human rights reporting shows how sensitive material can be summarized with integrity (United States Department of State, 2024). HRW and Amnesty provide models for evidence presentation that protect sources and still advance accountability (Human Rights Watch, 2024, 2025; Amnesty International, 2024).
“Media did cover.” Episodic coverage is not accountability. The test is sustained, case-level follow-through to outcome and remedy. That is where oversight committees, audit offices, and rights bodies should converge—and where Nigeria’s record is an archipelago of starts without finishes (House of Representatives, 2024; Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2021; OAuGF, 2024, 2025; National Human Rights Commission, 2022).
The system fix—procedure by procedure, office by office
A serious repair agenda does not wait for foreign attention. It does five unglamorous things now:
- Case clocks with teeth.Mandate public dashboards for all mass-casualty cases: investigation milestones, prosecutorial decisions, hearing calendars, judgments. Tie institutional performance to budgets (ACJMC, n.d.; British Council—RoLAC, 2023).
- Audit enforcement.Convert Public Accounts findings into auto-executing directives after a fixed period unless explicitly overridden by recorded supermajority votes (Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2021; OAuGF, 2024, 2025).
- Victims’ right to remedy.Hard-wire restitution pathways into criminal outcomes; publish compliance; make non-payment a contempt with personal liability.
- Humanitarian surge triggers.Statutorily bind NEMA and relevant ministries to time-bound surge standards following mass events; report publicly; align with OCHA HRP targets (National Emergency Management Agency, 2024; Humanitarian Response/OCHA, 2025).
- Data symmetry.Require the Ministry of Police Affairs and Corrections to link crime statistics and inmate records to case IDs for high-profile atrocities, enabling civil audit by press and parliament (Ministry of Police Affairs, 2024, 2025; Nigerian Correctional Service, n.d.).
None of this needs a constitutional amendment. All of it needs political will and administrative competence—qualities that cannot be imported, only chosen.
The line that power crossed
Tinubu’s government inherited a blood-stained docket and a brittle state. It also inherited the tools to reverse both: statute, budget, and bully pulpit. The record to date shows something else—communications strategy without commensurate accountability strategy, budget lines that moved faster for narrative than for justice, and an international conversation that too often let that inversion stand. When the paper of record chooses the outer ring of the story over its core—when it centers what Washington thinks and enters what Abuja failed to do—it does not lie. It licenses. And licensing is how impunity survives.
What is owed the dead is not outrage. It is process that arrives on time. It is a police file that becomes a charge sheet that becomes a judgment that becomes restitution. It is an audit query that becomes a recovery that becomes a sanction that deters the next theft of capacity. It is a country that understands the difference between being seen and being safe—and chooses the latter even when cameras move on.
The next time a minister mouths “ongoing,” the newsroom should ask for the clock. The next time a budget speech lauds security or health, the PAC should point to the audit page and the release ledger. The next time the presidency buys narrative, citizens should ask which clinic closed, which case lapsed, which family buried without a day in court. That is how the killing stops—not because power grows a conscience, but because power finally meets a system that works.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an internationally acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
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