Before the white garment.
Before the flowing jalabiya.
Before the cathedral bells and the mosque loudspeakers.
Before the imported gods arrived with their competing heavens and foreign tongues.
There was Ogbomoso.
There were the people.
There was the land.
There was fear.
And there was Elemoso.
History tells us that Elemoso was not an ordinary terror. He was a mystery wrapped in blood. A demonic tormentor whose presence turned communities into prisons of fear. He struck and vanished. He killed and disappeared. He was invisible, untouchable, untraceable. Mothers feared childbirth. Farmers feared the bush paths. Children feared the night. The land groaned under a terror nobody could explain.
Then rose a man.
Not from Rome.
Not from Mecca.
Not from Canterbury or Jerusalem.
But from among the people.
A man burdened enough by the cries of his people to confront terror with the courage of ancestral conviction. He was neither Christian nor Muslim. Yet he understood leadership beyond religion: that the first duty of authority is protection.
And when the encounter came, it was not the God of Europe that fought for Ogbomoso. Christianity had not arrived. It was not the God of Arabia. Islam had not planted its banner there. It was whatever spiritual authority the land itself recognized that answered the cry of the people.
Elemoso fell.
Ogbomoso breathed again.
And history named the victory.
Today, centuries later, Elemoso has returned.
Not with charms and masquerades.
Not with invisible arrows in the night.
But with motorcycles.
With guns.
With kidnappings.
With school invasions.
With the abduction of teachers and children.
Forty-six human beings vanished into fear.
Seven teachers.
Thirty-nine children.
Toddlers.
Primary school pupils.
Teenagers.
Educators.
A two-year-old child carried into uncertainty.
A principal abducted.
Vice principal taken.
Communities broken.
Parents shattered.
And once again Ogbomoso trembles before a terror that appears larger than the courage of the age.
Where is Ogbori Elemoso?
Where is the spirit that once rose in defence of the land?
Where is the authority that confronts terror before it becomes normalized?
Where is the throne that speaks with moral fire?
Where is the warrior consciousness of a people that once refused to surrender their future to fear?
The tragedy is not merely that kidnappers invaded schools.
The tragedy is that fear has now become ordinary in Nigeria.
Children disappear, and governments issue statements.
Villages are attacked, and authorities promise investigations.
Communities mourn, and political actors continue consultations for 2027.
Meanwhile, terror studies us.
Terror understands us.
Terror exploits our confusion.
And confusion indeed reigns in the land.
The throne of the ancestors now sits in a complicated tension between inherited tradition and imported convictions. The palace may be concerned, deeply concerned, but concern without cultural authority is helpless before organized terror.
One side of the spiritual divide speaks in tongues yet surrendered the ancient seat of the fathers in pursuit of modern faith identity. Another side, armed with intellectual arrogance and “imo to le,” mocks what it no longer understands while possessing no superior answer to the insecurity consuming the land.
So the battle continues.
The gods from afar battle for influence.
The people perish in the middle.
Neither Rome nor Saudi Arabia will secure Ogbomoso.
Neither denominational superiority nor sectarian pride will rescue kidnapped children from forests.
What is required now is what saved Ogbomoso in the days of Elemoso:
a people-centred courage.
A leadership willing to confront terror directly.
A communal awakening that sees security as sacred responsibility.
Because when schools become hunting grounds, civilization itself is under attack.
The names in that kidnapping report are not statistics. They are prophecies hanging in the balance. Doctors unborn. Teachers interrupted. Future leaders swallowed by national failure.
And if Ogbomoso cannot protect its children, then the ancient victory over Elemoso is being reversed before our eyes.
So again we ask:
Soun, where is Ogbori Elemoso?
Because the land is crying again.
The children are missing again.
Fear is walking openly again.
And history is waiting to see whether Ogbomoso still remembers how it once defeated terror.