By: Zagazola Makama

The air in Udune Efandion community, Uromi, was heavy with sorrow. Grief-stricken families stood in silence, their faces etched with pain, as 16 coffins were lowered into the earth. The cries of mourners filled the afternoon sky, echoing through the village a chilling reminder of the horrors that had unfolded just days before.

The victims, accused of being kidnappers by an angry mob, never had a chance to defend themselves. Their pleas for mercy were drowned by the rage of the crowd. No trial, no evidence just raw, unchecked fury that ended in brutal violence. Now, they lay side by side in a mass grave, their lives cut short by the very community they once called home.

A mother clutched the grave’s edge, her wails piercing through the silence. “My son was not a kidnapper! He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time!” she sobbed. A father, his eyes empty, held onto a photograph of his only son, who had left home that morning full of dreams and never returned.

Yesterday, three were buried. Today, sixteen more. Nineteen souls lost in a storm of fear and suspicion.

As the final handfuls of soil were thrown over the graves, the community stood still, grappling with the weight of what had been done. Injustice, irreversible and cruel, had claimed the innocent.

And now, all that remained were the tears, the regrets, and the deafening silence of lives that should never have been lost.