It’s only the first week of September, and Rivers State already has names to mourn. Loveth was seized outside her shop at Eleme by gunmen who fired shots in the air before speeding off. Days later, an NTA reporter, Chidiebere Onyia, was kidnapped near Woji as she headed home from work. Two women among other casualties, two ordinary days interrupted, all before the “ember months” even properly began. The usual line writes itself: another ember season, another season of blood. But that story is a myth, and myths let everyone off the hook.
Nothing about September changes human nature. What changes is money. School fees fall due, rents are renewed, and later in the year, bonuses and Christmas spending fill the streets, visible cash in a place where good jobs are scarce, and the gap between rich and poor is wide. Criminals don’t follow a calendar; they follow opportunity. Crime rises in ember months because this is when more people are carrying more money, and more families are desperate enough to be targeted. Calling it a “curse” is really just a way of avoiding a harder question: why does our economy create these predictable pockets of desperation every year, and why does nothing change?
That’s also why the “ember curse” idea is dangerous; it’s an excuse. It lets government agencies skip the boring, necessary work: checking informal transport unions, funding market security, planning instead of just warning citizens to “be careful, it’s that time of year again.” A myth needs no accountability. A pattern does, and demands one.
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Look at what’s already happened this September. Beyond Loveth and the reporter, the same tools keep showing up: unregistered Keke buses, fake number plates, locally made pistols. This isn’t some new evil arriving with the dry season. It’s the same gangs, the same roads, the same daylight boldness, just timed to when victims are carrying more cash and criminals need more of it.
Still, credit belongs where it’s earned. The arrest of Victor Ini by police in Eleme, after a gun battle that recovered weapons, a vehicle, and fake identity cards, shows that focused policing works when it’s properly resourced. That’s the real story here, not “ember curse strikes again,” but “good police work got a result in days.” The Commissioner’s appeal for public tips isn’t just a formality either; it’s exactly this kind of public cooperation that helped crack this case.
But the job isn’t finished. Other gang members are still free, and the guns moving through these crimes, cheap, locally made pistols reaching ordinary criminals, deserve their own investigation. Residents shouldn’t just applaud one arrest and move on. They should expect a public update in weeks, not silence once the story fades from the news.
Ember months don’t kill people. Poverty, loose gun control, and under-funded policing do, on a schedule we can actually predict. Until Rivers State starts planning for September through December like a real security and economic challenge, instead of a superstition, this same story will keep repeating itself, right on time.
