Nigeria, June 3 -- Too many boots on the ground, too late. Forty-seven lives extinguished in Naka, and suddenly the government remembers the town exists. The security forces arrive, not to prevent bloodshed, but to sweep up what remains of a massacre they allowed. It's the Nigerian tradition of eye service where action only follows outrage, and outrage only comes when enough bodies stack up. But who speaks for the dead? And what exactly is the state protecting, if not its people?

Men in uniform, shiny Hilux trucks, weapons slung across shoulders, eyes scanning a landscape already soaked in grief. The state has arrived but not to protect. It has come to perform. Forty-seven civilians lie cold in their graves, slaughtered by Fulani herdsme...