EDITORIAL: Oyo schools’ kidnappings: Stopping a regional contagion now!

The mass abduction of students is a pastime of terrorists in Northern Nigeria. Its drift to the South-west occurred on 15 May with the raid of three schools in Oyo State, resulting in the kidnapping of about 32 persons. One of the victims is a mathematics teacher, Michael Oyedokun, who has been beheaded in a gruesome manner. This was a most barbaric act, which has struck fear into the people of the state, and Nigerians at large.

These horrific incidents really need to be stopped across the country, and particularly before they also become the norm in the South-west and other parts that they are gradually creeping into. The schools recently affected were Community High School, Ahoro-Esiele; Primary School, Esiele; and Yawota Baptist Nursery and Primary School, all in Oriire Local Government Area of the state. The official tally of those still in captivity is: 18 pupils of the primary schools, seven students of the secondary school involved, and seven teachers. However, community leaders say 46 people were affected, whose names and ages they have provided.

The synergy of response efforts is of the essence now, to secure the release of those still alive among the abducted. Tactical and intelligence teams have been deployed for this objective. Presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, in a statement, enthusiastically stated that, “We expect a breakthrough soon,” as the Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Disu, is reportedly leading a “technology-driven (rescue) operation.”

We can’t wait for this huge relief. So far, six persons believed to be informants and logistics suppliers to the felons have been arrested. Three more persons of interest have been nabbed too.

As President Bola Tinubu noted, “Cases of kidnapping further make imperative the establishment of state police to provide more personnel in some of the underserved areas. The National Assembly should accelerate the enactment of the law creating state police.” This is at the heart of Nigeria’s security conundrum. When the “protection of lives and property” by the government has become a deception of sorts, everybody is in danger and should join the alarm train.

An attempt to bridge this gap informed the establishment of Forest Guards. Their deployment was recently directed to become nationwide by the president, in the wake of similar embarrassing mass abductions. So, we dare ask: Where are their footprints?

The necessity of a close watch of neighbourhoods and the forests was why Amotekun, the local security outfit, was embraced by the South-west states. In meetings held by governors in the region, they had proposed the setting up of a Security Trust Fund. And, in Ibadan in November 2025, they agreed on the establishment of a real-time digital security platform devoted to issuing cargo and travel advisories, raising threat alerts, reporting nefarious incidents, and coordinating a rapid cross-border response to criminality.

Lagos State Governor and Chairman of the South-west governors’ forum, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, said shortly after the gathering that, “governors reaffirm their collective commitment to reclaiming the forests and ensuring these spaces no longer serve as safe corridors for bandits and kidnappers…” The Oyo school kidnapping has, therefore, presented a big challenge that they cannot shy away from.

Security breaches have been hitting the South-West of late. Its contiguity with North-central states like Kogi and Kwara, which have long been exposed to terror cells and their bestialities, made the Oyo schools’ abduction a fait accompli. Indeed, it was only a matter of time. Besides, kidnapping episodes in farms and on highways across the region, leading to deaths and ransom payments, had been giving signals of a budding inevitability.

The prescience of Gani Adams, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, bears repeating here. On 18 November, 2025, he issued a wake-up call that terrorists and bandits had infiltrated forests in the six states of the South-West – Osun, Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Ekiti and Lagos – in their plot to unleash coordinated attacks against the region.

Now that the most dreaded moment is here, a critical appraisal of the security around schools needs to be carried out to fashion out how they could be better secured, being soft targets for these terror attacks. Sadly, the Safe Schools Initiative, birthed in 2014, seems to have petered out, if not become a hoax. Panic-stricken, the Oyo State Government has closed its public schools in the four local government areas of Surulere, Oriire, Oyo East and Olorunsogo, until further notice.

It is hoped that this interregnum will not last long. Releasing those kidnapped could precipitate the return of normalcy; buoyed by Governor Seyi Makinde’s expression of willingness to listen to the abductors. Among the captives is a two-year-old toddler, Christianah Akanbi. A tot being unsafe in school is the height of the government’s negligence and irresponsibility.

READ ALSO: Viral video of abducted Oyo school principal raises questions over captives’ location, rescue operation

States that have not been affected by this misfortune should not feel indifferent, given the ubiquity with which terrorists/bandits now operate. The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Olufemi Oluyede, in a bid to calm frayed nerves, has dismissed the grisly incident as uncharacteristic, claiming that there is no sign of the entrenched presence of terrorists in the region. We beg to differ.

Nothing could be more suggestive of the advent of a more precarious state of affairs in the region than the Catholic Church bombing that killed 50 worshippers in Owo, Ondo State, in 2022. What is more, the five suspects arrested three years later, were charged in court in August 2025, under Nigeria’s anti-terrorism law. In February, gunmen invaded the Celestial Church of Christ, also in Owo, and kidnapped six worshippers.

The country has had enough of this adversity, from the attacks in Chibok, Buni Yadi, Kankara, Kebbi, and Papiri, to the similar assaults on other schools. About 91 of the Chibok schoolgirls are yet to be rescued, 12 years later. Presently, Nigerians have lost all patience with official excuses. The government has to rise up to its responsibility and rescue the Oyo pupils and their teachers now, before it is too late.