By Dr Peter N. Mbile
There is an unmistakable truth that every society must confront in moments of upheaval: life is the first dividend of civilization.
It is the singular value upon which all other values stand.
Yet in the fog of conflict, when actors struggle for recognition, power, legitimacy or even attention, this foundational truth is pushed aside.
Arguments about voting, democracy, governance, rights and justice rise noisily to the surface, while the very justification for these ideals, *the sanctity of human life* , is ignored, trivialized or sacrificed altogether.
I write as an Oroko man, Ndian, Cameroon, with deep ties to both Batanga and Ngolo communities.
Our fathers told us of disagreements in years past, disagreements sometimes strong enough to spark fights.
But they also taught us something profoundly civilizing: whenever a serious injury occurred, hostilities stopped immediately.
The fight ended not because one side had won or lost, but because both sides recognized _a threshold that must never be crossed._
Life was the boundary. Injury was a warning. Humanity was the law .
This moral discipline no longer governs our public life.
Today we witness acts of brutality that stain the conscience of our nation: beatings, torture or killings in custody; summary executions in villages, corpses burned to erase evidence of cruelty, a Chief publicly executed on a Sunday morning in front of a church, mass killings carried out as vengeance against communities, and the horrific beheading of Mrs Ayafor by non-state actors, etc.
These are not aberrations.
They illustrate a shift in our collective psychology, a corrosion of values that once anchored even our disagreements.
Political killings have acquired a chilling flavour: calculated, public, and often performed for symbolic effect.
The actors justify them through ideological rhetoric, rebellion, dangerousité, self-defence narratives or claims of “ *liberation* .” or ” *public order”*
Yet the victims are overwhelmingly innocent.
Communities are treated as bargaining chips. Civilian lives become expendable props in the theatre of competing ambitions.
How did mundane political quarrels, so distants from the day-to-day concerns of the average villager, acquire the power to eclipse the value of life itself?
Why does the murder of a simple farmer or mother no longer provoke the collective moral outrage it should?
Why have public officials who steal funds meant for schools, clinics, and roads become normalized, as if depriving citizens of life-enhancing services were not another, quieter form of violence?
Our indigenous traditions already provide the ethical blueprint we seem to have forgotten.
Long before international conventions, our ancestors understood rules of engagement.
They recognized that even in conflict, there are boundaries. “ *Do no harm to non-combatants* ” was not a foreign doctrine; it was a cultural instinct that kept communities alive.
Reclaiming the life dividend therefore requires more than condemning violence.
It demands restoring the moral architecture that once shaped our behaviour.
It means insisting, in our discourse, our institutions and our engagements with warring factions, that every argument about justice, governance or identity is subordinate to the right to live.
It requires reminding all actors, state and non-state alike, that war too has rules, and that the deliberate targeting of civilians is not struggle but savagery.
If there is any hope for sustainable peace, development or national renewal, it begins with this simple but profound truth: no cause, no grievance, and no political aspiration can justify the extinguishing of innocent life.
Our civilization depends on remembering this. Our future demands that we enforce it.
