Dorayi, Kano: A Mirror We Can No Longer Look Away From

By Abdul Kezo IkonAllah

The brutal killing of a woman and her five children in Dorayi Quarters, Kano, is one of those moments that should force a nation to stop, breathe, and confront itself honestly. This was not just another crime headline. It was a moral collapse made visible.
It is tempting, in moments like this, to search for easy explanations—drugs, poverty, religion, politics, or ethnicity. But doing so without deeper reflection only postpones the next tragedy. What happened in Dorayi was not committed by strangers or invaders. It was carried out by young men produced by the same society now expressing shock.
That is the uncomfortable truth.
This tragedy did not begin with the knife. It began years earlier—when communities normalised neglect; when children roamed the streets without guidance; when drug abuse became common knowledge but collective action felt inconvenient; when schools decayed and education lost its moral purpose; when unemployment robbed young people not just of income but of dignity and hope.

Nigeria has grown adept at blaming government for everything while absolving itself of responsibility for anything. Leadership failure is real, but it thrives because society tolerates it. We insult corrupt leaders in private yet defend them in public on the basis of shared identity. We excuse theft, incompetence, and brutality as long as the offender is “one of us.”
A society that celebrates corruption cannot be shocked by violence.

Religion, too, must be honestly examined. Faith has been reduced in many quarters to slogans and identity badges, stripped of its ethical demands. Religion without compassion, discipline, justice, and restraint is not faith—it is performance. God does not accept explanations written in blood.
Equally dangerous is the reflex to ethnicise crime. Evil has no tribe. Violence is not genetic. What creates monsters is sustained neglect—by families, by communities, by institutions, and by a nation that has outsourced its conscience.

The Dorayi killings are not an isolated incident. They are a warning. If we continue on this path—normalising decay while performing outrage—more women will die, more children will be buried, and more young men will be lost to brutality.
The hard questions must now be asked:
When will parents reclaim their role as moral guides?
When will elders act as leaders rather than spectators?
When will communities draw firm moral red lines?
When will we stop waiting for government, clerics, or the police to fix what we refuse to confront ourselves?

No government can save a society that will not save itself.
Mourning is necessary. Justice is essential. But introspection is unavoidable. History will not judge us by our tears alone, but by whether we had the courage to change while we still could.
The mirror has been raised. We can no longer look away