When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu arrived in Jos on a condolence visit, the setting of what followed spoke louder than any prepared speech.
The airport—Heipang—became the stage upon which grief and power briefly met, only to part again within minutes.
There is something deeply unsettling about asking grieving families to leave the sanctity of their homes and assemble on a tarmac.
Mourning is intimate; it belongs to quiet rooms, to tear-stained faces, to the slow and heavy passage of sorrow. But here, grief was summoned into a place of transit—an in-between space where nothing lingers for long.
In that moment, pain was made to conform to protocol. The bereaved did not receive the state in their space; rather, they were brought into the orbit of power, however briefly, before it moved on.
And then came the stark reminder of time—ten minutes. Ten minutes to console the shattered. Ten minutes to acknowledge lives brutally cut short. Ten minutes before departure.
It may well reflect the demands of high office, but it also reveals a troubling hierarchy: that even in the face of profound human loss, the clock of power does not slow down.
Sympathy, compressed into a schedule, risks becoming something performed rather than something deeply felt.
The President’s remark about the absence of light at the airport, though valid in itself, carried an unintended weight. In a moment that called for undivided attention to human suffering, the focus shifted—if only briefly—to infrastructure.
Yet, perhaps it was symbolic in ways not immediately intended. For what greater darkness can there be than the anguish of families who have lost their loved ones? What deeper failure exists than a nation unable to protect its own?
The darkness at the airport was visible; the darkness in the lives of those gathered was immeasurable.
What unfolded bore the quiet marks of distance—an almost imperial separation between the governed and those who govern. The choreography was familiar: arrival, brief engagement, swift departure.
The state appeared elevated, time-bound, and transient; the people, rooted in grief, were left behind. It was not merely a meeting—it was an encounter shaped by hierarchy, where one side must always adjust to the pace and convenience of the other.
This is not to question the intent of the visit. It was, without doubt, meant as an act of sympathy. But intention alone is not enough. The manner of expression matters. True compassion demands presence—not hurried, not managed, not confined to the margins of an itinerary.
It requires the willingness to step into the space of the afflicted, to sit where they sit, to listen without watching the clock, to allow grief its full dignity.
Arrival and Departure at Heipang Airport thus becomes more than a fleeting episode. It is a mirror held up to leadership in moments of tragedy.
It asks whether power can pause long enough to truly see the people it serves, or whether it will remain in constant motion—arriving, acknowledging, and departing—while sorrow stays behind, waiting to occur again.
Nations are not comforted in passing. They are healed in presence—deep, patient, and unhurried—where empathy is not measured in minutes, and where the distance between authority and anguish is not so vast.