It is a global embarrassment that the United States Congress is now actively reviewing reports of mass killings, persecution, and insecurity in Nigeria, while our own Senate and House of Representatives behave as though nothing urgent is happening. Foreign lawmakers are holding hearings, demanding briefings, questioning officials, and pushing for sanctions. Back home, our National Assembly is debating trivialities, exchanging political jabs, and protecting party interests.
What does it say about a nation when outsiders are more concerned about the well-being of its people than leaders elected to defend them?
Every week, Nigerians are buried. Schoolchildren disappear. Families mourn. Entire communities are dislocated. But hardly do we see emergency sessions, investigative panels with bite, and binding resolutions from the National Assembly. Nobody is summoned with urgency. Nobody is forced to resign. Nobody loses sleep. Our legislators act as if insecurity were the weather. Something to be watched, not confronted.
If the U.S. Congress has enough evidence and moral outrage to investigate Nigeria’s killings, then our own lawmakers have no excuse for silence. Nigeria’s legislature has the constitutional power to demand accountability from security agencies, compel transparency from the executive, and legislate emergency protection for high-risk regions. Instead, we get condolences, motions “noted,” and resolutions that evaporate the moment the gavel drops.
This is not legislative oversight. This is legislative absenteeism.
The National Assembly needs to wake up. Insecurity is a national emergency that must be treated as such. They have to hold open hearings, summon service chiefs, interrogate intelligence failures, and force the executive to present a real strategy. People did not vote for spectators; they voted for representatives.
If America can ask hard questions about Nigerian lives, then the least our lawmakers can do is ask them too.
What Nigeria needs is a legislature that does not have to wait for foreign intervention before doing its job. It is not external criticism that disgraces our democracy but internal silence.
