By Sharon Akuboh
In the quiet town of Amasiri, grief has found a voice. Last night, under a heavy curfew, a woman went into labour.
There were no sirens.
No rushing nurses.
No flickering hospital lights.
The health centres were shut. The clinics locked. The roads deserted. Fear hung in the air thicker than the darkness. Men who might have helped stayed indoors, wary of arrest. Movement was restricted. Help was distant. Time was merciless.
She laboured through the night on a bare floor.
No doctor.
No midwife.
No oxygen.
No hope beyond prayer.
By dawn, her baby lay still.
No cry pierced the morning.
No small fingers reached for warmth.
No breath ever came.
What crime did this child commit? It’s being Amasiri.
The mother does not speak in politics. She does not argue policy. She is not calculating strategy or debating governance. She is staring at a lifeless body and asking heaven why her child never saw the sun.
A curfew is meant to protect lives. It is meant to restore order, not silence labour pains. It should not mean that a woman in childbirth must choose between breaking the law and burying her baby.
Yet this is the question hanging over Amasiri today. She can’t even bury the baby because all young men have fled Amasiri. The Older men are too frail to dig graves, what a dilemma. This is double jeopardy.
Residents whisper about hardship and fear. They speak of closed doors and empty streets. They speak of policies that feel distant from the realities of midnight emergencies. They speak of leaders far away from the cries that echo in small homes.
Governor Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru presides over Ebonyi State at a time when security measures have tightened across parts of the state (Amasiri) . Authorities often argue that such restrictions are necessary to restore peace and order. But in homes like this one, the consequences feel painfully personal.
This story is not about slogans.
It is about a tiny body wrapped for burial. But no one to perform the Rites. Culturally women can’t go to Otutu eja.
There will be no naming ceremony. No celebration. No proud father lifting his child to the sky. Only a shallow grave. If at all the Senior Citizens can muster the energy to dig a grave to bury the baby. Only unanswered questions.
How many more must pay this price?
The people of Amasiri are not asking for chaos. They are asking for balance. For emergency access. Where are the International Community, Where is Nigeria Red Cross Society, where are the Human Rights People.
For health centres that remain reachable when life hangs by a thread. For policies that remember the fragile space between security and survival.
Today, a mother mourns.
Today, a community bleeds quietly.
And somewhere in that silence lies the simple, aching truth: a child is gone. The government failed the baby, failed its mother and failed Amasiri. When will this carnage end??? Amasiri is bleeding.
#Justice4Amasiri
#ProudlyAmasiri
#IStandWithAmasiri