By Stephanie Shaakaa
Gboko, 24 September 2026
Mr. President,
I am writing to you from Gboko, where government is not experienced through communiqués or presidential briefings. People meet government when they go to the market, when they travel to the farm, when they pay school fees, when transport fares rise and when they have to decide which household expense can wait until next month.
*Tinubu and Macron
But that is not the whole story of what it means to live here.
I am also writing from a place where fear is not an abstract word. In Benue, news of another attack is no longer something people encounter only in newspaper reports. Communities have been attacked, families have lost relatives and farmers have been forced to think carefully about whether it is safe to return to their fields. On September 10 and 11, an attack on Ayilamo in Logo Local Government Area left four police officers and seven civilians dead. Four days later, two more police officers were killed in an ambush while returning to the same community.
