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By Lawrence Agbo
Security analyst and lawyer Bulama Bukarti has said the recent abduction of schoolchildren in Oyo State reflects deeper security challenges confronting Nigeria, warning that attacks on schools cannot be addressed in isolation from the broader insecurity affecting communities across the country.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Bukarti said armed groups have long recognised the propaganda value of targeting schools, pointing to the 2014 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping as a turning point.
“What Boko Haram also understood from the Chibok kidnapping in 2014 was that abducting school children can bring attention and can serve as propaganda material for them,” he said.
According to him, efforts focused solely on securing schools are unlikely to succeed if surrounding communities remain vulnerable to attacks by criminal and terrorist groups.
“The idea that you can isolate schools from the rest of the society and protect them from attacks while attacks continue in the rest of the society is impossible. If you want to protect schools, you have to protect everyone in the society,” Bukarti stated.
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The security consultant argued that recurring kidnappings and attacks demonstrate the need for a comprehensive review of Nigeria’s security framework, insisting that current strategies have failed to deliver lasting results.
“We need to completely change our national security architecture. Whatever we have done over the last 20 years has not worked,” he said.
Bukarti called on President Bola Tinubu to undertake far-reaching reforms of the country’s security system, similar to recent efforts aimed at restructuring the tax administration framework.
“President Tinubu needs to work on the national security architecture and reform it just like he did to our tax system,” he added.
His comments come amid growing concern over the safety of schools and the increasing threat posed by kidnappers and armed groups targeting students in different parts of the country.
