Verydarkman And Pope Leo Xiv: When Outsiders Carried Nigeria’s Grief In Benue — While The Press Looked Away

There are moments in a nation's unraveling when the loudest cries for justice do not come from its leaders or institutions—but from its margins. In the aftermath of the Yelwata massacre in Benue State—where hundreds were slaughtered, homes incinerated, and survivors left to bury their dead in silence—it was not the government that rose to speak. It was not the press that held the vigil. It was two outsiders, two men from opposite ends of the world, who stepped forward to carry what Nigeria itself refused to touch: the grief of its own people.

Martins Vincent Otse, known widely as VeryDarkMan, and Pope Leo XIV, spiritual head of the Catholic Church, both stood in that moral vacuum. One walked through scorched villages, camera in hand, unfiltered and furious. The other stood beneath the grandeur of the Vatican, lifting a prayer over a land whose name was never uttered by its own Commander-in-Chief. They did not belong to the same class, creed, or system—but they shared something sacred: the courage to bear witness. While elected officials hid behind press releases and media editors rearranged headlines to soften the truth, Otse and Leo did the unthinkable—they told it.

Otse did not flinch. He entered Yelwata’s ruins and filmed what most editors would later refuse to air—blackened corpses, children in shock, entire families lost in one night of terror. He demanded to know: “Where are the journalists? Where are the front pages?” And his question echoed across a nation tired of excuses. Pope Leo, from thousands of miles away, did not offer platitudes. He named the village. He called for justice. He prayed not in abstraction, but in specificity—for the Christian poor of Benue, for the safety of the forgotten.

Their parallel acts exposed a deeper fracture: when the state retreats into bureaucratic distance and the press averts its gaze, the burden of mourning and moral clarity falls on those with no official duty—only conscience. While the press looked away, Otse and Leo refused to.

This is not just a story about Benue. It is a story about emotional abandonment. About moral displacement. About what happens when institutions created to inform, protect, and dignify instead choose to defer, dilute, or disappear. It is a window into the psychology of a faltering republic—where truth becomes too heavy for those tasked with carrying it, and where empathy migrates from the centers of power to the fringes of society. In such moments, it is no longer the ministers or media chiefs who hold the nation’s conscience—it is the activist with a phone and the priest with a prayer.

Otse’s Rage, the Camera’s Truth
Martins Otse is no diplomat. He is raw, brash, often polarizing. But in this moment of national horror, he was present. While politicians polished speeches, Otse entered the villages of Benue where the stench of blood still hung in the air. With a smartphone in hand, he recorded what government-controlled media would not dare show—burnt bodies, razed homes, survivors too numb to speak, and children orphaned overnight. He did not flinch. He did not filter. He asked aloud what most journalists wouldn’t whisper: “Where are the editors? Have they been bought? Or are they just afraid?” In that moment, he became not just a commentator, but a national archivist of grief—preserving what others wanted forgotten.

Otse did not reduce pain to theory. He walked in it. He became the raw moral presence that Nigeria’s formal institutions failed to offer. And in doing so, he stepped into a role that should have belonged to the state and its media: the role of mourner, documentarian, and national conscience.

Rome Speaks, While Abuja Looks Away
Thousands of miles away, another voice emerged—not from the continent, but from the Vatican. Pope Leo XIV did what Nigeria’s Commander-in-Chief did not: he spoke the name Yelwata. He did not reduce the tragedy to vague appeals for “peace.” He named the dead, acknowledged the Christian poor, and called for protection and justice. It was a moment of global dignity for those whose pain had been locally erased.

His words were not an act of charity; they were an indictment. An indictment of a government too politically cautious to mourn its own, and of a press too compromised to expose the truth. When a pontiff becomes a more reliable voice for Nigerian rural victims than the country’s own leadership, what we are witnessing is not just dysfunction—it is emotional abandonment on a national scale.

Journalism’s Collapse: From Witness to Withholder

What Otse and Pope Leo XIV exposed—unintentionally but powerfully—was the terrifying vacuum where moral leadership and honest journalism once lived. Activists are now doing the work of reporters. Priests are doing the work of presidents. It is no longer just about failure of function; it is about a full-scale displacement of responsibility. Where the Constitution mandates truth-telling and transparency, we now find silence, evasion, and delay. The press has not just failed to act. It has betrayed its very essence.

As I have said before: “Silence by the media in the face of mass death is not neutrality—it is betrayal.” Nigerian journalism, in too many quarters, has become an agent of anesthesia—softening horror, hiding outrage, and massaging public emotion into apathy. And it must be said again with clarity: “When the media becomes a tool for selective reporting, it stops being the voice of the people and becomes the tongue of tyrann

Not Just Benue: A National Pattern of Editorial Betrayal

Let it be clear: this pattern of media betrayal is not limited to Benue. It is systemic. It stretches across virtually every sphere of Nigerian society—from unreported extrajudicial killings in the South East, to the silencing of labor strikes, to the quiet deletion of corruption stories involving powerful politicians and civil servants. The public sees it. They feel it. While a few brave reporters and platforms still fight for truth, the dominant national perception is unmistakable: the Nigerian media is no longer “with the people”—it is with the government, with the powerful, with the protectors of privilege.

Reporters on the ground may want to tell the truth, but they are often muzzled by editors who serve not journalistic values, but political patrons. These editors, who wield control over what sees daylight, have become filters of propaganda, not facilitators of truth. The result is a media landscape that produces more distraction than direction, more noise than justice.

What Is a Corrupt Editor? Proverbs of National Destruction

It is one thing to ignore a tragedy. It is another to disguise it. Too many media editors now function not as watchdogs of power, but as decorators of decay. And so I must name them plainly, not with insult but with editorial diagnosis:

“A corrupt media editor is worse than an armed robber raiding a bank in Lagos, because while the robber’s actions are visible, the editor’s manipulation is invisible and far more destructive.”

“A corrupt media editor is more harmful to society than an armed kidnapper roaming the Abuja highways.” The kidnapper terrorizes a body, but the editor can terrorize a democracy.

“A corrupt media editor is like a danfo driver who takes passengers on a perilous route, putting their lives at risk.” The editor may seem in control, but their detours end in moral crashes.

“A corrupt media editor is like a chop bar owner serving poisoned food to unsuspecting customers.” The public consumes what feels nourishing, only to find their awareness and empathy decaying.

“A corrupt media editor can destroy reputations like a bushfire ravaging a farm.” What took decades to build—trust, memory, conscience—can be burned away in one editorial meeting.

These are not just rhetorical devices. These are national diagnoses. In a time of carnage, the editor holds more than ink. He holds the moral map. And when he misguides, entirepopulations lose their compass.

When Editors Become Accomplices, Strangers Must Become Witnesses

In the absence of integrity from those paid and positioned to inform the public, it fell to Otse and the Pope to become truth-bearers. “A corrupt editor does not kill with bullets but with headlines—they decide what lives in memory and what is erased forever.” What we saw was not just a media lapse. It was a funeral without a eulogy. A massacre without a headline. A nation that had to outsource its mourning.

What does it say of a republic when a content creator and a clergyman must lead the rituals of national grief? When journalists dodge stories like cowards, and the press corps becomes a set of puppets pulling their own strings?

Otse showed up where no correspondent dared to. The Pope spoke out while the Commander-in-Chief remained mute. And together, they performed the moral labor that Nigeria’s Fourth Estate abandoned.

If the Press Will Not Cry, Who Will?
This crisis is not only about the dead. It is about the living who are being trained not to feel. If atrocity cannot make headlines, then what can? If silence greets the slaughter of entire communities, then what is journalism for? This is no longer about politics or security. It is about national psychology. It is about emotional decay.

If Otse had not screamed, if the Pope had not prayed, Benue might have simply vanished into the back pages of history. But they did scream. They did pray. And in doing so, they showed us what leadership sounds like when stripped of privilege and restored to truth.

Conclusion: A Funeral for the Printed Conscience

If Nigeria’s press had not faltered, Otse would not have needed to scream into his phone for the world to see the dead. If the institutions of state still remembered how to mourn, the Pope’s prayer would have been a gesture of solidarity—not a substitute for leadership. But that is not the Nigeria we inhabit. Ours is a nation where grief now relies on outsiders. Where those entrusted with truth have made peace with evasion. Where memory, once etched in headlines, is now deliberately blurred.

This is more than a media failure. It is a spiritual collapse—ahollowing out of national empathy. In the silence that followed Benue, we did not just lose citizens to violence. We lost the very instruments meant to uphold their dignity. We lost front pages that once shamed power. We lost broadcasters who once dared to ask why. In their place, we now have curated silence, approved grief, and sanitized tragedy.

Yes, there are still a few journalists who try to be good. There are those who write bravely, report under pressure, and fight to keep the truth alive. But they are the exception, not the perception. And in public consciousness, the damage is already done. To most Nigerians, the press is no longer their voice—but the echo of the powerful. The newsroom is no longer seen as a guardian of justice—but as a gatekeeper of political favor.

Let us weep—not only for the bodies left unclaimed in Yelwata—but for the death of something deeper: the conscience of the newsroom, the moral muscle of journalism, the editorial spine that once stood upright in the face of power. Weep for the reporter whose pen has become a passport to access, not accountability. Weep for the editor who sees the faces of murdered children and still chooses to bury the story beneath headlines of fashion and politics

And let us never forget: a corrupt media editor may never wield a machete or pull a trigger, but he can erase memory, disfigure truth, and murder meaning. He does not silence the people with bullets—but with omission. And sometimes, that is more permanent. More cruel. More unforgivable.

This was not just a funeral for the dead in Benue. It is a funeral for what we thought journalism used to be. And if we do not name that loss, we risk forgetting not only what happened—but who we are.