In the grand, rotting theater of global governance, few acts are as consistently committed to the bit as the Nigerian security apparatus. The latest performance in Kaduna State is a masterclass in what I like to call 'Strategic Hallucination.' While residents—those pesky, inconvenient witnesses to their own lives—insist that 168 human beings were plucked from their homes and churches by armed groups, the Nigerian police have responded with the bureaucratic equivalent of a blank stare and a slow blink. They didn't just deny the attacks; they essentially suggested that 168 people have simply transcended the physical plane, perhaps to escape the sheer, crushing weight of state incompetence.

Let us admire the audacity for a moment. To lose a set of keys is an annoyance. To lose a television is a crime. But to 'lose' nearly two hundred citizens while simultaneously maintaining that nothing happened requires a level of cognitive dissonance usually reserved for cult leaders and Silicon Valley CEOs. The police statement, a document likely written with the same level of care one gives a grocery list, dismissed the reports of church attacks as if they were rumors of a UFO sighting. Meanwhile, the families of the missing are left clutching at the air, told by their protectors that the holes in their communities are merely optical illusions. It is a spectacular form of gaslighting that turns a kidnapping into a philosophical debate: if a person is abducted in Kaduna and the police chief chooses not to hear it, do they actually exist?

Naturally, the political response is as predictably nauseating as a lukewarm cafeteria tray. On one side, we have the performative outrage of the international human rights community—the 'Left' in its most impotent, digital form. They will craft a hashtag, perhaps host a webinar in a climate-controlled room in London or D.C., and then return to their artisanal espressos, feeling they have 'raised awareness.' On the other side, the domestic 'Right' will call for more 'security funding,' a euphemism for buying more shiny hardware that will be used primarily to intimidate journalists or sit rusting in a lot while the next village is emptied. Both sides are fundamentally invested in the status quo because the status quo provides them with a purpose. The kidnappers provide the crisis; the government provides the denial; the activists provide the noise. It is a closed-loop economy of misery where the only thing not being produced is safety.

Deeply analyzing the motives here reveals a chilling truth: the Nigerian state has realized that truth is far more expensive than fiction. To acknowledge 168 hostages is to acknowledge a failure of such catastrophic proportions that even the most thick-skinned bureaucrat might feel a twinge of shame. To deny it, however, is free. It costs nothing to issue a press release. It costs nothing to call a grieving mother a liar. By maintaining this posture of aggressive ignorance, the police ensure they never have to admit they have lost control of the territory they claim to govern. It is the 'Lord of the Flies' re-imagined as a police procedural, where the conch shell has been replaced by a megaphone that only broadcasts static.

Historically, this isn't new. States have always treated the lives of the periphery as disposable line items. But the modern twist is the sheer, bored arrogance of it. They aren't even trying to hide the bodies anymore; they are simply trying to delete the concept of the body. If the state refuses to record the crime, the crime does not enter the ledger of history. It is a ledger managed by idiots and balanced by cowards. The residents of Kaduna are not just victims of armed groups; they are victims of a clerical erasure. They are being told that their trauma is a 'misunderstanding,' as if 168 people being hauled into the bush is something that could be confused with a particularly rowdy picnic.

We live in an age where reality is a buffet, and the Nigerian police have decided to starve. They have looked at the evidence—the empty pews, the ransacked homes, the silence where voices used to be—and decided that none of it tastes as good as a well-crafted lie. And why shouldn't they? There are no consequences. The world is too busy doom-scrolling through the next shiny catastrophe to care about the 'unverified' disappearance of some villagers in a country they couldn't find on a map without a search engine. The kidnappers know this, the police know this, and I certainly know this. The only ones who haven't caught on are the 168 people currently waiting for a rescue that isn't coming from a government that says they aren't even gone. It would be funny if it weren't so pathologically pathetic.