“It Will Not Happen Again” — Then It Happens Again And Again
By Matthew Eloyi
When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu stood before grieving families in Jos and declared, “this will not happen again,” it was meant to comfort. Instead, it brought memories. Because in Nigeria today, that promise has been made too many times, and broken even more.
The tragedy in Jos, where innocent people were slaughtered in yet another brutal attack, is not shocking anymore. That is perhaps the most painful truth. It is familiar. Predictable. Almost scheduled. The only thing that changes is the location. Today it is Plateau, yesterday it was Benue State, before that Kwara State, and tomorrow, who knows?
But the script never changes.
After every massacre, leaders arrive. They express sorrow. They condemn the violence. They promise justice. And then, almost inevitably, they say it: it will not happen again.
Yet somehow, it always does.
So when that promise is repeated yet again, Nigerians are left wondering: is this reassurance, or is it denial?
Because if we are being honest, nothing in the current reality suggests that these killings will simply stop because a president says so. The men who carry out these attacks are not listening to speeches. They are not deterred by condolences. They are certainly not waiting for permission.
They act because they can, and because, time and time again, they get away with it.
That is the part no one in power seems willing to confront directly.
What makes the promise “it will not happen again” so troubling is not just that it is often unfulfilled; it is that it replaces the harder, more necessary conversation. The conversation about why it keeps happening in the first place.
Why do attackers move so freely?
Why do communities remain so vulnerable?
Why does help so often arrive after the killing is done?
Why are arrests rare and convictions even rarer?
These are the questions Nigerians are asking. And they are not getting clear answers. Instead, they get promises.
There is also something deeply unsettling about how routine these assurances have become. A community is attacked, lives are lost, and almost on cue, someone in authority declares that it will be the last time. But there is no visible shift in strategy. No dramatic improvement in response. No sense that anything fundamentally has changed. It begins to feel less like a commitment and more like a ritual.
Even those who have governed Plateau State understand the depth of the problem. Jonah David Jang admitted he has seen this cycle before. Simon Lalong said he has lived through it as well. They know this is not a problem that disappears with declarations.
And yet, the country keeps leaning on words as though they can substitute for action. The danger here is not just that the promise may fail, it is that people are starting to stop believing it altogether.
And when citizens lose faith in such assurances, something deeper begins to erode. Trust weakens. Fear grows. Communities begin to feel abandoned, left to fend for themselves in a system that seems unable or unwilling to protect them.
That is how insecurity becomes normalized. That is how a nation quietly adjusts to violence. And that is how a promise like “it will not happen again” becomes not just ineffective, but dangerous, because it creates an illusion of control where there is very little.
To be fair, no leader can guarantee that violence will never occur again. That is not how the world works. But that is exactly why such promises should not be made so casually, especially in a country where the evidence consistently points in the opposite direction.
What Nigerians need is not certainty; they know that is unrealistic. What they need is visible effort, consistent accountability, and a sense that those in power are confronting the crisis with the seriousness it demands.
Right now, that gap between words and reality is too wide. If anything, each repeated promise only makes the next tragedy harder to bear. Because it reminds people that they have heard this before – standing over fresh graves, listening to familiar words, hoping, once again, that this time might be different.
And then it isn’t. So perhaps the problem is not just the violence. Perhaps it is also the language used to respond to it.
Because in a country where killings keep happening, “it will not happen again” is no longer comforting. It is haunting.
