A village head and six of his neighbours were taken from their homes before dawn. Three days earlier, gunmen took eight more from a community nearby. Nobody in government has said anything about either.

Residents of Kajuru and Kachia local government areas in Kaduna State are pleading with President Tinubu and Governor Uba Sani for help. Armed men invaded Maro Ward in Kajuru and Agunu Ward in neighbouring Kachia in an early morning raid. They abducted the village head of Kuturan Buzu, Felix Ladan, along with six residents. The victims were named. Hauwa Murtala. Gwamna Murtala. Grace Gwamna. Friday Jacob. Queen Friday. Mrs Gambo. And Ladan himself.

This was not the first attack that week. Three days earlier, terrorists invaded Banono Ungwan Aku in the Kufana district of Kajuru around midnight, taking eight more residents. Two raids, two communities, roughly 15 people gone in under a week.

As of the time residents spoke to reporters, no ransom demand had been made. The Kaduna State Police Command had issued no statement. The Ministry for Internal Security and Home Affairs had said nothing either.

Compare that silence to what happened with the exam fees in the same 48 hours. One story moved a government ministry to reverse a signed policy overnight. The other has not moved anyone to issue so much as a press release.

The difference is not that one crisis matters more than the other to the families living inside it. It is that one crisis has a constituency loud enough and connected enough to make the cost of ignoring it higher than the cost of acting. Parents facing a N50,000 exam fee include lawyers, journalists, civil servants and people with a public platform. Families in Kajuru and Kachia are farmers in communities that have been absorbing these raids for years. They have no press office, no social media reach large enough to force a national response, and no obvious lever to pull.

This is not the first time this has happened in these same local government areas. Communities here have been living with recurring attacks long enough that residents now describe fear as a constant, not an event. What the state can do quickly when it wants to is no longer in question. Monday proved it can move in hours. What remains unanswered is why the same government has not managed the same urgency for people who have been begging for it far longer than a single news cycle.