Terrorists Celebrate the Capture of our Children! A Children’s Day Lament! By The Conscience Chronicler

Dateline: May 27, 2026. The children we celebrate today are not the children of our speeches. They are not the children of the marching bands, the colourful uniforms, the presidential handshakes, or the carefully worded press releases. They are not the abstract “future leaders” we invoke when the cameras are rolling and the hashtags are trending. The children we celebrate today, or rather, the children we claim to celebrate, are flesh and blood. They are two, three, four and fifteen years old. They have names that their mothers whisper into the night. They have fears that no child should ever know. They have faces that are now seared into the national conscience, if only we had the courage to look. And as of this Children’s Day, May 27, 2026, which the Federal Government has also declared a public holiday for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, many of them are not in any classroom, not in any parade ground, not in any place of safety. They are in the bushes of Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State and the surrounding forests, twelve days and counting, held captive by men who have already shown that they do not value human life. A teacher has already been beheaded. Videos of his killing have circulated online, investigated by the police, but not yet resolved. His name was Michael Oyedokun. He was 49 years old. He leaves behind a family that had to write to the President of the Federal Republic just to ask for his body back.

Let me say it plainly, as the Conscience Chronicler, because the nation has lost the capacity for plain speech. On May 15, 2026, twelve days before Children’s Day, suspected Boko Haram-linked JAS terrorists, as the Defence Headquarters has since confirmed, invaded the Yawota and Esiele communities of Oriire Local Government Area in Oyo State, a region of the South-West that many had believed, or hoped, was beyond their reach. They rode in on motorcycles. They attacked three schools: Baptist Nursery and Primary School in Yawota, Community Grammar School in Esiele, and LA Primary School in Ogbomoso. They killed two people on the spot, including a commercial motorcyclist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They abducted at least 45 students, pupils, and teachers. Among the victims were children as young as two years old. The principal was taken. The teachers were taken. And then, days later, they murdered Michael Oyedokun, a teacher of Community High School, Ahoro-Esinele, in a manner so gruesome that I will not describe it here beyond the word that the news has already printed: beheading. They filmed it. They may have even enjoyed filming it. And as we mark this Children’s Day, with its matching pasts, its goodwill messages, its lofty speeches about the “strength, creativity, and limitless potential of our children,” not a single one of those children has been rescued.

This is not a failure of capacity. It is a failure of will.

We have known for months that this was coming. For months, concerned citizens across the South-West watched the signs and warned the authorities: the mass movement of recalcitrant armed Fulani youth from the far north towards the south-west, the intelligence reports of terrorist displacement from the Lake Chad region, the growing boldness of criminal networks emboldened by years of impunity. The Yoruba Council of Elders, Afenifere, various civil society organisations and ordinary people on social media platforms all sounded the alarm. “Yorubaland cannot afford to be the next frontier of mass abduction,” they said.

“This attack on innocent children and their teachers is not just a crime against Oyo State, it is an assault on the conscience of Nigeria,” they said. The government did nothing effective. The security agencies, despite their occasional press conferences and their deployment of additional detectives, appeared incapable of preventing what was clearly foreseeable, and now appear incapable of rescuing what was clearly foreseeable. The Defence Headquarters initially dismissed the attack as “an isolated criminal incident,” even suggesting that there was no established terrorist network in the South-West, as if a gang of armed men riding motorcycles, attacking three schools simultaneously, abducting dozens of children, beheading a teacher on video, and then melting into the forests with the victims for ten days could be anything other than a sophisticated, coordinated, and sustained operation. The Chief of Defence Staff eventually ordered a comprehensive security reinforcement across Oriire and surrounding communities, but the order came on May 27, Children’s Day itself, twelve days after the abduction. Twelve days. A toddler can learn to walk in twelve days. An infection can progress to sepsis within 12 days. A nation can lose its soul in twelve days.

Meanwhile, the political calendar has not paused. It never pauses. The party primaries continue. The presidential candidates, the governorship candidates, the senatorial candidates, all of them, continue to brandish their certificates of return, shake hands at campaign rallies, and issue statements of condolences that they have clearly copied and pasted from the last tragedy. President Bola Tinubu has condemned the killing of the teacher, describing it as “barbaric,” and has assured the nation that the victims will be rescued. The Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, has expressed his readiness to listen to the abductors’ demands, even as his government mobilises the military, the police, the civil defence corps, and the Amotekun security network. The Inspector-General of Police has visited the affected communities, expressed deep concern, and extended heartfelt condolences to the families.

The Federal Government, as if to ensure that the nation’s attention is properly divided, has declared May 27 and May 28 as public holidays for Eid al-Adha, a festival grounded in the values of sacrifice, obedience to God, and compassion for one’s fellow man. But what sacrifice has this nation made for its children? What compassion does this government show for the 46 people, mostly children aged between two and sixteen, who have spent ten days in captivity, perhaps being moved through thick forests in neighbouring states to evade security operatives, perhaps being starved, perhaps being tortured, perhaps being prepared for the next viral video? This is not a rhetorical question. It is a moral accounting.

Consider the scale of the catastrophe we have normalised. Amnesty International Nigeria has reported that at least 1,100 people were abducted across northern Nigeria between January and March 2026 alone, with victims allegedly subjected to torture, starvation, rape, and other inhumane treatment while in captivity. In April 2026, Boko Haram issued a 72-hour ultimatum demanding a ₦5 billion ransom for the release of 416 abducted women and children in Borno State, threatening to “share” them if the ransom was not paid. In the same month, the terrorists threatened to execute 176 women and children abducted from Kwara State if their demands were not met. In May, just days before the Oyo attack, more than 50 children were kidnapped from three schools in Borno State, some of them toddlers. Terrorism has metastasised. It has spread from the north-east to the north-west to the north-central to the south-west. It has adapted, evolved, and grown bolder with each unpunished atrocity, each unaccounted ransom payment, each unfulfilled promise of rescue. The Agbekoya Farmers’ Society of Nigeria has alleged that the victims of the Oyo abduction are being moved through thick forests in neighbouring states to evade security operatives; forests that should have been patrolled, mapped, and monitored months ago. The military has deployed special forces and aerial assets to hunt the kidnappers and has claimed to have killed 118 terrorists and rescued 221 kidnapped civilians across various theatres of operation nationwide. But the children of Oyo remain in captivity. The teacher’s beheading remains unavenged. The parents remain in agony.

And this is the deepest wound, the one that festers beneath all the statistics and the press releases and the political theatre: the parents. Imagine being a mother in Oyo State right now. Imagine waking up on May 15, packing your child’s school bag, perhaps adding a little extra snack because your child was excited about the day’s lessons. Imagine kissing your child goodbye, not knowing that it might be the last time. Imagine hearing the news of the attack, the gunmen, the abduction, the death of a teacher. Imagine calling your child’s phone and hearing nothing but the echo of your own terror. Imagine waiting ten days for any news, any sign, any indication that your government, your security forces, your nation, has not forgotten your child. Imagine celebrating Children’s Day in the shadow of that uncertainty. And then imagine reading that the same government that cannot rescue your child has declared a public holiday for Eid al-Adha, and that your governor has said he is “ready to listen to the demands of the abductors” as if your child’s life is a negotiation, as if terror has been normalised to the point of diplomacy.

I cannot imagine it. I will not pretend to. I am only a writer, a chronicler of conscience, a voice in the wilderness of our national indifference. But I can name what is happening. We are losing our children. We are losing them not only to the guns and the machetes of the terrorists, but to the silence of the state, the complicity of the elite, and the exhaustion of the populace. We are raising a generation for whom school is not a place of learning but a place of risk. We are teaching our children that the government cannot protect them, that the security forces cannot save them, that the only reliable defence is a prayer and a whispered hope. We are modelling, through our inaction, that some children matter more than others, that the children of the north-east may be expendable, that the children of the north-west may be negotiable, that the children of the south-west, until recently, were far enough away to ignore. And now the violence has come to their doorstep as well, and we see that no region is exempt, no child is safe, no future is secure.

The solutions are not mysterious. They have been proposed by civil society, by security experts, by the United Nations, by everyone who has been paying attention. We need community policing that is adequately funded and genuinely integrated. We need intelligence gathering that is proactive rather than reactive, and that tracks the movements of armed groups across state lines and national borders. We need a comprehensive disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration programme for the bandits and terrorists who are willing to surrender, and a relentless pursuit of those who are not. We need to cut off the financing of terrorism by freezing the bank accounts of known sponsors, suspending illegal mining licences that fund the bandits, and prosecuting the elites who profit from chaos. We need to restore the public’s trust in the security forces by ensuring that those forces are well-paid, well-equipped, and well-led, and that they are held accountable when they fail. We need to end the culture of impunity that allows terrorists to negotiate with state governments, to appear on television, to issue ultimatums, and to be rewarded with ransoms that only fund the next attack. We need political leadership that prioritises the safety of children over the convenience of the powerful, and that treats every abduction as a national emergency, not a local incident.

But above all, we need to wake up. We need to stop celebrating Children’s Day as a ritual of hollow speeches and march-past parades, and start treating every day as a day of accountability for our children’s safety. We need to hold our leaders responsible, not just at the federal level but at the state and local levels, for the security of their constituencies. We need to demand that the party primaries and the campaign rallies be postponed, if necessary, until every abducted child is rescued and every terrorist is neutralised. We need to refuse to accept that it is normal for 45 children and teachers to spend ten days in captivity while the nation goes about its business. We need to mourn the dead, yes, but we also need to fight for the living.

The Children’s Day message from the Federal Government this year spoke of inclusive education, of protecting children’s rights, of building a nation where every child can achieve their dreams. It was a fine speech. It was written by someone who likely believed in it. But fine speeches do not rescue children. They do not bring back the dead. They do not deter the next attack. What rescues children is political will. What brings back the dead is justice. What deters the next attack is the credible threat of overwhelming force, applied without hesitation and without mercy. None of these things is beyond our capacity. All of them are beyond our current will.

The Conscience Chronicler does not write to depress. The Conscience Chronicler writes to awaken. And so, I say to the parents who are waiting, to the families who are grieving, to the teachers who are protesting, to the students who are afraid: you are not forgotten. Your children are not statistics. Your pain is not invisible. There are still those of us who see, who remember, who refuse to look away. And to the government, to the security agencies, to the political class, I say: the clock is ticking. The children are waiting. The nation is watching. Do not make us wait another ten days. Do not make us mark another Children’s Day in the shadow of unavenged atrocities. Do not let the blood of Michael Oyedokun and the tears of his family be just another footnote in the endless archive of Nigerian failure.

Rescue them. Bring them home. And let us, finally, learn what it means to truly celebrate a child.