Oyo vs Borno: The danger of selective rescue in Nigeria’s school abductions, by Abubakar M. Kareto
The basic act of sending a child to school in rural Nigeria has morphed from a pursuit of upward mobility into a terrifying gamble with fate. The twin tragedies that struck our nation on May 15, 2026, served as a devastating reminder of this reality.
In the Mussa community of Askira Uba Local Government Area, Borno State, Boko Haram insurgents breached classroom sanctuaries to abduct 42 pupils. On that very same day, across the country in the Oriire axis of Oyo State, armed bandits raided an educational institution, carting away 46 students and teachers into the bush.
Beyond the immediate heartbreak inflicted upon these families, these dual assaults expose the systemic vulnerability of our frontline schools. They deal a severe blow to the Safe Schools Declaration and threaten to drastically expand Nigeria’s already catastrophic out-of-school children index.
However, while the tragedy was uniform, the official response was starkly asymmetric. In the wake of the Oyo State incident, the presidency deployed its heaviest bureaucratic and security machinery. A high-powered federal delegation led by the Chief of Staff and accompanied by the National Security Adviser personally visited the scene to coordinate rescue efforts.
Conversely, the mass abduction of 42 innocent children in Askira Uba by a globally recognised terrorist faction was met with a jarring administrative silence. The response was reduced to the usual, boilerplate rhetorical condemnations issued from Abuja, completely devoid of the urgency, political will, or resources witnessed in the Southwest.
This visible imbalance in state response is both politically unsettling and strategically dangerous. By treating identical tragedies with vastly different levels of executive energy, the federal government inadvertently signals a tiered security architecture.
A security policy that prioritises certain geopolitical zones over others risks fracturing national cohesion. It also risks fostering deep-seated resentment among historically marginalised frontline communities.
A mass abduction by Boko Haram in the Northeast must never be treated as an expected cost of regional geography. It demands the exact same executive panic, tactical assets, and political urgency as a security breach anywhere else in the federation.
To bridge this trust deficit and ensure a sense of national belonging for all grieving parents, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the military high command must immediately harmonize their rescue strategies. The armed forces, particularly the troops of Operation Hadin Kai, must be mandated to deploy the exact same intensity of kinetic pressure and aerial intelligence tracking to the Askira Uba axis that is currently being utilized in the forests of Oyo.
Selective empathy cannot form the basis of national security. Nor can the state afford to establish a precedent where the lives of Nigerian children are weighed on different geopolitical scales.
Ultimately, the federal government must understand that the protection of educational spaces is an indivisible constitutional obligation. The Safe Schools Initiative cannot be selectively implemented.
If specialised forest guards are deemed the immediate remedy for securing the agrarian spaces of the South, the federal government must act. As a matter of urgency, it must design, fund, and deploy equivalent localised security components and deep-surveillance frameworks tailored for the unique terrain of the North.
All Nigerian children, whether learning under the canopies of Borno or within the classrooms of Oyo, possess an equal, unnegotiable right to a secure learning environment. The administration must act swiftly to correct this disparity, for when the state fails to protect its youngest citizens equally, it compromises the moral legitimacy of its authority.
Abubakar M. Kareto is a Public Affairs Analyst. He can be reached via amkareto@gmail.com.
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