Alarming Rise in Kidnappings of School Children

The authorities must do more to secure and protect our children

On the morning of 15 May, while children in three schools in the Oriire area of Oyo State were beginning their day, more than a dozen gunmen on motorcycles entered Baptist Nursery and Primary School in Yawota, Community Grammar School in Esiele, and L.A. Primary School. By the time the assailants fled back into the forest, an assistant headmaster and a motorcyclist had been killed, and dozens of pupils and teachers were forced into the bush at gunpoint. A few days later, one of the abducted teachers was beheaded. A security officer who had joined the rescue effort later died after stepping on explosives planted by the kidnappers along the trail.

On the same day, in distant Borno State, gunmen seized more than 40 children from a school in the Askira/Uba area, underscoring that this is not a local tragedy but a national problem. The abducted Borno children remain unaccounted for, while the pupils and surviving teachers from the Oyo State incident are still somewhere in the forest. The principal of one of the schools, also a captive, has filmed a video from the bush, pleading for the country to remember that they are alive and waiting.

For years, Nigerians had believed that such attacks were confined to remote, ungoverned forests far from the centers of power. That view has changed. Today, no region in the country is safe from these marauders. Last week in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, gunmen abducted the younger sister of a former Minister of Power and her 12‑year‑old twin sons while on a school run. Fortunately, they have since been released.

After the April 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, a coalition of Nigerian business leaders, working with former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his capacity as United Nations envoy, launched the Safe Schools Initiative. Tens of millions of dollars were pledged and raised, but the project has since faded. Today, most reports indicate that more than 42,000 vulnerable schools across the country still lack even a perimeter fence to keep a child away from a kidnapper.

Perimeter fencing, solar‑powered lighting, early‑warning systems, and rapid‑response protocols are the minimum decency owed to a child who attends school. Some form of properly designed and inspected sub‑national policing is a matter of survival. The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) has refused to suffer in silence, taking its grief to the streets in Lagos, Kano, Plateau, Enugu, Osun, Taraba, Kogi, and other states. Teachers have also threatened to shut down the nation’s classrooms if the government does not act. In response, a presidential directive has called for the recruitment of 1,000 forest guards, but a specialised security unit announced in a press release is not the same as a child returned to his or her mother.

Education is the one thing that might, in a generation, drain the swamp from which banditry rises. Already, the sheer weight of insecurity is making many parents reluctant to send their children to school in a nation already plagued with millions of out‑of‑school children. Amnesty International Nigeria has warned of the consequences of the ongoing wave of kidnappings targeting schools. “The trauma that comes with being abducted, or with the fear of being abducted, is going to prevent thousands of children from getting an education completely,” says Country Director Isa Sanusi. Sadly, many schools, especially in rural communities across the country, remain easy targets for these criminals.

A nation that cannot keep its children in school has, in the most literal sense, mortgaged its future. Therefore, guarding schools and equipping them with electronic warning systems and devices that help track affected locations are minimum requirements. If children cannot freely and safely attend school, and citizens’ freedom is curtailed by the fear of abduction, where lies the soul of our republic?