CLASSROOMS AS FRONTLINE OF INSECURITY

Government must bring the abducted children home, argues JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA

These are not the best of times. There is a two-year-old child in the bush somewhere in Oyo State. She was taken from a nursery school on May 15. She has been out there for nearly three weeks. She does not understand what ISWAP is. She does not understand migration routes or command structures. She understands cold, rain, and the absence of her mother. This two-year-old and the several others in the captivity of these terrorists are the latest victims of our country’s endless challenge with insecurity.

On May 15, 2026, over 40 teachers, pupils and students were kidnapped from three schools in Ogbomoso and Oriire communities of Oyo State: a Baptist Nursery and Primary School, a Community Grammar School, and an L.A. Primary School. This reportedly happened on the same day that 42 school children were abducted in Askira-Uba Local Government Area of Borno State. A mathematics teacher, Mr Michael Oyedokun, was beheaded. An assistant headmaster was killed. An abducted vice principal, Mrs Alamu, recorded a distress video from the bush on the 13th day of captivity, kneeling and pleading for negotiation: “We are in the cold, we are under the sun and inside the rain, the children and adults as well. We are begging you.”  

Then came the demand that strips away any remaining ambiguity about who these people are and what they want. Reports indicate the kidnappers are not simply asking for money. They are demanding the release of colleagues arrested for bomb-making. Children are being used as leverage to free people who build weapons designed to kill civilians. Beyond banditry with economic motivations, this is a terrorist negotiating tactic and it tells you something precise about the ideological infrastructure behind what happened in Oriire.

In Oyo, the attackers used explosives during the abduction. Rescue team members sustained injuries after encountering explosive devices planted by the kidnappers during operations. These were not opportunistic criminals who stumbled upon three schools. This was a planned, coordinated, ideologically motivated operation, in Oyo State, which was not supposed to be a high-risk zone.  

That geographical spread is the story beneath the story. Contrary to the belief that school abductions are purely a Northern problem, the Oyo attack confirms that the crisis has reached the South-West. Since the Chibok abduction of 2014, over 1,600 schoolchildren have been kidnapped in Nigeria. Approximately 597 students were abducted within 2023 to 2026 alone. These are the accumulated costs of a national security architecture that has been structurally insufficient for almost two decades now.

On May 16, 2026, the United States and Nigeria launched a joint military operation against ISWAP and Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, including special forces raids and multiple rounds of airstrikes. By May 19, 175 ISWAP and Boko Haram militants had been eliminated. Among the dead was Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, described as one of the most significant ISIS operatives in the world, alongside several other senior commanders killed in rapid succession. Al-Minuki coordinated terrorist financing, recruitment, logistics and attack planning. His death severely disrupts ISIS command, operational coordination and external attack networks.  

The most telling confirmation of the pressure came from ISWAP itself. As security analyst Brant Philip first reported, through their unofficial media channels, the group announced that all routes of hijrah — migration corridors for foreign fighters — are now closed. Their stated reason was the attacks of what they called “the American dogs and the apostates of Nigeria.” The situation, they declared, was too dangerous.

As recently as February 2026, ISWAP was actively recruiting foreign fighters, with Caucasian fighters confirmed in their ranks. By June, the same organisation is telling potential recruits the journey is no longer survivable. That is a recruitment freeze imposed by operational reality. When a terrorist organisation closes its own doors and names the enemy as the reason, it is being honest about its condition.  

This context reframes the Oyo abductions in an important way. The classroom attacks are not evidence of a confident, expanding insurgency. They are, at least in part, evidence of what cornered organisations do. When command structures are decapitated, when logistics networks are disrupted, when migration routes close under military pressure, groups pivot to the tactics requiring the least infrastructure: terror, hostage-taking, the exploitation of civilian vulnerability. The demand for bomb-makers’ release is itself a sign of operational stress; an organisation losing trained personnel it cannot easily replace and willing to use children as the price of getting them back.

The Institute for Security Studies has noted that ISWAP’s fragmented structure gives zone commanders greater operational autonomy, meaning targeted leader killings yield mixed results and tend to have more symbolic than practical impact. That honest caveat must be stated. Al-Minuki’s death disrupts morale and logistics but it does not end the organisation. The closed migration routes may reopen if pressure is not sustained. These gains are real and reversible in equal measure.  

What Nigeria needs now is the immediate, relentless operational focus on returning the children in Oyo and Borno to their families. The demand to release bomb-makers in exchange for schoolchildren must be rejected without ambiguity. Nigeria cannot establish the precedent that terrorist infrastructure can be rebuilt through the bodies of its children. This is easier said than done but we cannot be seen to be conceding ground to these groups. Beyond this, there is the strategic discipline to understand that the methodology working in the northeast, intelligence-led, internationally coordinated, focused on command and logistics, must now be applied to the banditry and insurgent networks that have arrived in Oyo State.

The enemy has told us the pressure is working. In the same fortnight, it showed us what a cornered enemy does to civilians.

That two-year-old child in the bush in Oyo has no interest in geopolitical analysis. She wants to go home. Getting her home and keeping the next generation of children safe are not competing priorities. They are the same assignment and it is long overdue. When all is said and done, a government that cannot secure its citizens is failing at one of the most fundamental responsibilities of government.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing