By Deji Nehan
On May 16, 2026, armed men on motorcycles rode into three schools in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State and took 39 children and seven teachers. Among the youngest was a two-year-old toddler. Within days, a video circulated showing Michael Oyedokun – a mathematics teacher, someone’s husband, someone’s father – being beheaded by his captors on camera. His colleagues and students are still missing, and Nigeria has already moved on.
That is the crime inside the crime. Not just the abduction or the beheading, but the collective shrug, the news cycle, the prayers offered in place of answers, and the silence from the very people with the power and the obligation to end thisThis Is Not a Northern Problem Anymore. It Never Was.
Kidnapping in Nigeria is no longer driven by ideology or confined to a region. It is an industry, a business model that has been allowed to grow year after year because it has never been met with consequences that match the scale of the crime. Chibok was 2014. We hashtagged, mourned, and moved on, and the template was set.
Since then, hundreds of children have been taken from schools in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, Niger, Kebbi, Borno, Kwara, parts of the East, Edo State – and now Oyo. In November 2025 alone, gunmen took 303 pupils and 12 staff in Niger State, then attacked a girls’ boarding school in Kebbi, killed the vice principal, and walked away with 25 students. This is not a cluster of incidents. It is a national crisis that has been allowed to spread while the government managed press conferences and the rest of us scrolled past – every year, every region, every time.
If power cuts are Nigeria’s most visible failure, insecurity may now be its most fatal one. Children are not safe in classrooms, teachers are not safe in front of chalkboards, and the Nigerian state – from the President down – continues to operate as though this is manageable. It is not manageable. It is a collapse.
The Warnings Were Ignored
This attack in Oyo did not come from nowhere. In November 2025, Gani Adams, Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, issued a public warning that bandits and terrorists had already infiltrated forests across all six South-West states. Communities around the attack sites had been reporting security concerns to the police for months, and one father, Ojo Adekunle, whose son Joseph was among those taken, said plainly: “We had been noticing security issues and reporting them to the police, but they did not take us seriously.”
As early as January 2026, an armed assault on Old Oyo National Park had killed five forest guards, and residents had been flagging that criminal gangs were using that forest as a launchpad – conducting raids, retreating into the park, then striking again. The forest was a known corridor, the schools sat at its edge, and still nothing changed. Oyo State had even procured surveillance aircraft worth ₦7.7 billion as recently as July 2025, but that aircraft was reportedly still being reassembled in an Air Force hangar in Lagos when the children were taken – a surveillance aircraft sitting in pieces while children were carried into the forest.
Where Is President Tinubu?
The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must be held directly accountable for what this security failure represents – not symbolically, not rhetorically, but directly. Why are soldiers in barracks while children are in forests? Why is there no consistent military or police patrol around schools, nationally? Who authorised a governance culture where the President, governors, and officials travel with armed escorts while a classroom full of two-year-olds has nothing?
Who is the Minister of Defence, and why is he still in his position? What is the Inspector General of Police’s explanation for a security architecture that is visibly failing in every region of the country? If these men cannot answer clearly for this, they should not hold those offices. If President Tinubu cannot provide a credible, urgent, nationally coordinated response to a crisis that has now reached the South-West, he needs to either call for international help or acknowledge that this has exceeded his capacity to govern. We are not asking for press releases. We are asking who is responsible and what is being done.
Where Is the World?
This is no longer only a Nigerian question – it is an international one. The United Nations knows these children are missing. UNICEF tracks child abductions. The African Union exists. The United States, which has previously demonstrated it can project special operations forces into Nigerian territory when it chooses to, has the resources, the intelligence networks, and the stated commitment to counter-terrorism that ought to compel some form of action. The UK, home to one of the largest Nigerian diaspora populations in the world, has a Foreign Office with real leverage. So does the EU. So why is the international community silent?
Are they waiting for a death toll that crosses some invisible threshold? Are geopolitical calculations being made over the heads of missing children? Is Nigeria being managed rather than helped? These are not paranoid questions – they are what arises when the architecture of international response keeps failing communities that have been crying out for years.
Every Nigerian diaspora association in the UK, the US, Canada, Germany, and beyond must now make a decision. Attending embassy events is not enough. There must be organised, coordinated, and sustained engagement – formal letters, meetings with foreign ministers, appearances before parliamentary committees, and statements that connect the dots between Nigerian insecurity and the diaspora’s own credibility as advocates for their homeland. We have marched for racial justice in London, Amsterdam, and Atlanta. We can march for Oriire. The question is whether we will.
The March That Was Told to Pray
When Governor Makinde asked residents to replace their planned protest with prayers, the Take-It-Back Movement showed up anyway at Mokola Roundabout in Ibadan and said what needed to be said: “We will not pray away insecurity. Prayer is not a substitute for governance.” They were right, and then the cameras went away, the march did not sustain, and the news moved on.
Where are the mobilisers and organisers who kept the pressure alive after Chibok? Where are the voices with platforms – the influencers, podcasters, journalists, and community leaders – who should be building sustained content not just about this incident but about the accumulated failure that made it possible? A protest that lasts one afternoon changes nothing. A sustained, documented, escalating campaign that refuses to let officials rest – that changes culture, and we have done it before.
Blood on All Our Hands
The most dangerous thing in Nigeria right now is not the kidnapping itself. It is the normalisation of it – the collective shrug, the scroll past, the fatalism that has settled over the national psyche like harmattan dust. Every time the news cycle moves on, the state learns it can wait us out. Every time we send money home without demanding accountability, we participate in a system that sustains, through the economics of ransom and the politics of impunity, the very machinery that terrorises our communities. We are not responsible for the crime, but we are responsible for what we do next.
Michael Oyedokun walked into a classroom to teach mathematics. He was not a soldier or a politician – he was a teacher, and he was killed on camera while Nigeria watched and moved on. The children of Oriire are still in that forest. Demand answers, name the people responsible, and do not let this become another Chibok – a hashtag and a fading memory while the next abduction is already being planned. The blood is on all our hands if we allow this to become normal. It must never become normal.
Contributed by Deji Nehan – Diaspora Diary
The vision is to contribute to the development of Nigeria by leveraging the insights and experiences of the diaspora community. We aim to create a platform where knowledge and ideas can be shared freely, fostering a collaborative environment that drives progress and innovation. Our mission is to provide thought-provoking and actionable insights that can help shape policies, guide investments, and ultimately contribute to building a better future for Nigeria.
