And We Move: The Normalization of Tragedy in Nigeria

I saw the headline, read it once, and kept scrolling. Somewhere in Nigeria, people had died…again. And I felt nothing. Not shock. Not grief. Not even the reflexive “God abeg ” that used to escape my mouth automatically. I just kept scrolling. It was the pause after that scared me, the moment I realized I hadn’t paused at all.

If you’re Nigerian, you probably know this rhythm. Children are kidnapped. A community is attacked by bandits. Someone is killed on their way home. A girl is raped.  For a few weeks, social media fills with outrage, hashtags and calls for justice. Then something else happens, a celebrity scandal, a football match or a trending topic and the tragedy quietly slips out of our attention. Not because it stopped mattering, but because something newer arrived to matter instead.

And we move.

It’s tempting to call this indifference. To say Nigerians have simply stopped caring, that we’ve grown cold. But I don’t think that’s quite right. Because if we call it indifference, we never have to ask what made indifference feel necessary.

What if this isn’t indifference, but exhaustion? There’s a difference between a heart that has stopped feeling and a heart that has felt too much, too often, with nowhere for any of it to go.  When one tragedy seems to follow another relentlessly, and grief has nowhere to go, no justice, no explanation, no accountability, something in us learns to protect itself. We move on not because we don’t care, but because caring fully and repeatedly, without resolution, is unsustainable. Normalization, in this light, isn’t necessarily the death of empathy. It might be empathy’s coping mechanism.

But here’s the dangerous part: Whether we’ve become desensitized or simply exhausted, the outcome is a society that can absorb tragedy without demanding that anything change. And that absorption is convenient for the people and institutions that are supposed to be held accountable. If outrage always fades before it turns into pressure, if grief is always outrun by the next trending topic, then nothing ever has to change. Our exhaustion becomes someone else’s shield.

This is what worries me most about “and we move.” It’s not just a personal defense mechanism. It can become a national one. We’ve built an unspoken rhythm: something happens, we mourn briefly, we demand answers, and then life continues often unchanged until the next tragedy. Accountability requires memory. And we’re becoming a society that forgets easily.

I think about what this teaches those of us growing up inside this cycle. We’re not learning that tragedy is rare and should provoke a full stop. We’re learning that tragedy is Tuesday. That grief is a scroll-length event. That systems fail and nothing follows. It shapes what we expect from our leaders, our institutions, and even from each other, quietly lowering the bar for what we consider acceptable from those entrusted with our interests: our leaders, lecturers, doctors, employers, and everyone whose role comes with a duty or responsibility toward us.

So what would it actually look like if we didn’t move? Not endless collective mourning. That’s not sustainable either, and I don’t think it’s the answer. Maybe it looks like refusing to let the next trending topic determine the length of our attention. Maybe it looks like asking, every time: “And then what happened? ”  Not forgetting.  Following the story past the outrage phase, into the silence where accountability is supposed to live.

I don’t have a neat way to end this because I’m not any different. I might see the next headline, feel nothing and keep scrolling. But at least now, I’ll notice the pause. Or the absence of one.

But somewhere in between, I hope we remember that these were never just headlines. They were people with families, dreams, plans, and futures.

Lives that ended before they were supposed to.

And maybe that is the pause we owe them.