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By Chinelo Obogo
Former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, has warned President Bola Tinubu, state governors and the National Assembly against celebrating Children’s Day on Wednesday, May 27, 2026, saying it is not a day of celebration but a “National Day of Shame.”
In a statement published on her X handle terdayday, Ezekwesili said the entire political class has captured and destroyed the Nigerian state and as such do not possess the moral standing to extend goodwill to Nigerian children.
The former minister said the reason for her rebuke is because of the school kidnappings, beginning with the most recent. She cited the seizure of 39 students and seven teachers from a secondary school and two primary schools in the Ahoro Esinele community in Oriire district, Oyo State May 15.
She also recalled the abduction of 25 schoolgirls from the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Wasagu/Danko, Kebbi State, on November 18, 2025, during which armed men killed the school’s vice principal before taking the students from their hostel, most of whom are still missing.
Ezekwesili also recalled the November 21, 2025 kidnapping of 303 students and 12 teachers from St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri, Niger State, an abduction that forced more than 20,000 schools to close indefinitely.
She recalled the March 7 abduction of 287 students from Government Secondary School in Kuriga, Kaduna State, carried out by gunmen and the March 9 kidnapping of 15 children from a boarding school in Gidan Bakuso, Sokoto State, as they slept.
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She also talked about the kidnapping of Chibok girls, more than 90 of whom are still missing over 12 years after their April 14, 2014 abduction. She went on to name other kidnappings which happened in Dapchi, Kankara, Kagara, Jangebe, Afaka, Greenfield University, Bethel Baptist School, and Tegina, saying that some cases never received attention because Nigeria had “exhausted its capacity to grieve.”
She put the total number of students kidnapped since Chibok at no fewer than 1,799, with at least 670 children affected by school kidnappings in under two years.
Ezekwesili stated that approximately 19 million Nigerian children, representing 27 percent of the school-age population, are currently out of school due to kidnapping and that the situation is the worst in the world. She further cited figures showing that 70 percent of Nigerian ten-year-olds cannot read a simple sentence, calling the learning crisis an emergency that governments at all levels have refused to treat as such.
She condemned the demolition of the Makoko waterfront community, the continued use of almajiri children as political tools, under-age marriage in states whose laws conflict with the Child Rights Act, the failure to equip primary healthcare centres and a pattern of children abandoning school to hawk goods in traffic.
Ezekwesili demanded that the President and political class should use the day to publicly confess their failures, account for public budgets meant to guarantee child safety and welfare, disclose the names and current locations of every child still in captivity, and publish audited data on out-of-school children, stunting, learning poverty, and child mortality.
“A government that cannot protect its children has forfeited the right to celebrate them. You have not earned the right to speak to our children today. Don’t you dare. Period,” she said.
