Since the arrest of VeryDarkMan (VDM) at GTBank in Area 3, Garki, Abuja, I have watched events unfold with deep interest, not just as a citizen, but as someone trying to understand the soul of a nation bruised by injustice and stitched together by voices of courage. I have followed both the videos calling for his release and those that attempt to justify the action of the EFCC. And while many of these reactions are laced with emotion rather than legal clarity, the one thing they all echo is that VDM has become a symbol of hope—a voice rising where silence has become too loud.
I saw an interview his elder brother granted on Facebook. He spoke of how they grew up—struggling, surviving, fighting to eat and live another day. Their mother, he said, used to crack egusi just to keep the family going. That image hit me deeply. That is a mother sacrificing sleep, youth, and comfort just to keep her children upright.
Today, VDM stands as a product of that sacrifice. Not a perfect man—none of us are—but a fearless man. A man using his voice, platform, and energy to speak not just for himself but for others too: the ignored, the silenced, the oppressed. From remote villages in Ghana to the streets of Nigeria, his influence is not in question.
So, it broke my heart when I learned that he was arrested not in isolation, but in the very act of honoring his mother.
Imagine this: a mother who once bent over bowls of egusi, fingers blistered, back hunched in pain, now sees of son, grown and strong, escorting her to the bank—not just as a gesture of help, but of gratitude. It was supposed to be a moment of dignity, of pride, of vindication that her years of toil were not in vain. Yet, right in her presence, the EFCC swooped in and arrested her son. They didn’t wait for another day, another time, or another setting. No. They chose that moment. That sacred moment when a mother was receiving her reward.
What message did they send to her? That your sacrifices don’t matter? That even when your children rise, the system can still reduce them to nothing before your eyes?
They didn’t just arrest VDM. They arrested a mother’s pride. They bruised her soul. They trampled on the hope of a woman who gave everything just so her children would never be in handcuffs, or mocked, or silenced.
So I ask: What must be going through her mind right now?
Did I not suffer enough for this child?
Did I raise him only to watch him be taken away like a criminal, okay, while holding my hand?
Did I not teach him to stand for truth? Is this what standing for truth brings?
This is bigger than VDM. This is about what we do to the few people who still try to fight for the many. This is about a nation that often humiliates its heroes and exalts its villains.
The EFCC might have had its reasons—legal, procedural, or otherwise. But optics matter. Timing matters. Respect for the sacred bond between a mother and her child matters.
You may not like VDM’s style, but you cannot deny his substance. And if you do not see the injustice in how this arrest was carried out, then you are not only blind to the truth, you are deaf to the cry of every struggling mother whose only dream is to see her children rise.
VDM may be in detention, but what was truly arrested that day… was hope.
