Nigeria’s 2026 Children’s Day should be beyond rehashed symbolism and optics to trigger deep reflections on the state of the nation, writes Anthony Ubani
There are moments when a nation’s hypocrisy becomes too loud to ignore. Nigeria’s 2026 Children’s Day is one of such moments.
Across the country, government officials mounted podiums, released polished statements, preached inclusion, praised the promise of the Nigerian child, and spoke the usual language of hope. But beneath the banners and speeches was a shameful truth: more than 80 children were reportedly still in captivity after recent school attacks in Borno and Oyo States. Their parents were not celebrating. They were waiting. They were praying. They were breaking.
That is the moral obscenity of this moment. A country cannot celebrate children while some of its children are being held by kidnappers in forests. That is not celebration. It is performance. It is the kind of empty national theatre that Nigeria’s political class has perfected.
On May 15, suspected militants abducted children from schools in Mussa, Askira-Uba, Borno State. Around the same period, gunmen attacked schools in Ahoro Esiele, Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State. In Oyo alone, reports said 39 students and seven teachers were taken, with the children said to be between two and 16 years old. Two years old. Let that sink in. A toddler should be learning colours, songs, and simple words. In Nigeria, a toddler can become a hostage. What’s more, weeks earlier, a school teacher in the same Oyo state was abducted and beheaded and President Tinubu has said and done nothing about it. This is not merely a security failure. It is a collapse of moral seriousness.
President Bola Tinubu’s Children’s Day message spoke of a Nigeria where every child can “dream boldly, grow safely, learn freely, and succeed honourably.” It was the right sentence. But in the mouth of a government under which children are still being stolen from classrooms, it lands like an insult. Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili, winner of the prestigious 2025 International Anti-Corruption Excellence (ACE) Award in the Lifetime/Outstanding Achievement category, aptly posits that “a government that cannot protect its children has forfeited the right to celebrate them”
The president also urged children to shun violence, thuggery, cultism, substance abuse, cybercrime and bullying. Fine words. But what does that sermon mean to a child whose classroom has been invaded by armed men? What does “grow safely” mean to a parent whose child is sleeping in captivity? The government may argue that it condemned the attacks. It may say security agencies are working. It may say rescue operations are sensitive and cannot be fully disclosed. But Nigerians have heard these lines before. Chibok heard them. Dapchi heard them. Kankara heard them. Kuriga heard them. The families in Borno and Oyo are hearing them now. The truth is brutal: Nigeria has normalised the kidnapping of children.
What should shock the conscience now barely survives a news cycle. A school is attacked. Children are taken. Government condemns. Security agencies promise action. Politicians visit. Cameras flash. Then silence. Then another attack. Then another statement. Then another batch of grieving parents. This is not governance. This is national decay wearing agbada.
And while families wait for their children, the political class is busy preparing for 2027. Just days before Children’s Day, the State House published President Tinubu’s acceptance speech after his nomination as APC presidential flagbearer for the 2027 election. Reuters also reported that he had won the ruling party’s primary and would seek another term. There is nothing illegal about party politics. But there is something deeply indecent about a ruling elite that can organise primaries, endorsements, collation, speeches and political coronations with speed and precision, while abducted children remain beyond the reach of the state. Power knows how to protect itself in Nigeria. It does not know how to protect children. That is the real scandal.
A serious country would have treated these abductions as a national emergency. Not a routine security update. Not a paragraph in a press statement. Not a side issue buried under Children’s Day festivities. A serious country would have suspended the noise. It would have made the rescue of those children the first business of the republic. The President, governors, security chiefs, lawmakers, traditional rulers, and community leaders would have been forced into one urgent national posture: bring the children home.
But Nigeria does not do urgency for the weak. It does urgency for elections. It does urgency for political survival. It does urgency for elite comfort. It does urgency for fuel subsidy removal, tax policy, appointments, defections, party tickets and power arrangements. But when poor children are kidnapped from rural schools, the country suddenly becomes procedural, patient and vague.
That is why this Children’s Day should not have been celebrated in the usual way. It should have been observed as a day of national shame. The failure is even worse because Nigeria already has a Safe Schools framework. The Safe Schools Initiative was launched after the Chibok abduction in 2014. Nigeria signed the Safe Schools Declaration in 2015, ratified it in 2019, and adopted a National Policy on Safety, Security and Violence-Free Schools in 2021. There is also a ₦144.8 billion financing plan for 2023 to 2026. Yet Punch reported that 30 states had still not implemented the Federal Government’s Safe Schools Initiative, despite repeated school attacks.
So, the problem is not that Nigeria lacks policies. Nigeria is drowning in policies. The problem is that our policies often die between press conferences and implementation. We launch. We announce. We inaugurate committees. We print banners. We pose for photographs. Then children are left exposed.
This is why public anger must go beyond sympathy. Sympathy is too cheap now. These children do not need another emotional statement. They need rescue. Their schools need protection. Their communities need intelligence networks that work. Their parents need accountability. Nigerians need to know who failed, where the security warnings broke down, what funds were released, what was done with them, which schools were listed as high risk, and why those schools remained vulnerable.
A country’s leadership is judged not by the beauty of its speeches, but by the safety of its children. Not by the number of flags at Eagle Square, but by whether a child can sit in a classroom without being abducted. Not by campaign slogans, but by the simple fact of whether parents can send their children to school and expect them to return home. On that test, Nigeria is failing.
The wider numbers are terrifying. UNICEF has said Nigeria’s education system faces an alarming crisis, with 10.2 million primary school-age children and 8.1 million junior secondary school-age children out of school. It also reported that attacks on schools had contributed to closures in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. In plain language, millions of Nigerian children are already outside the classroom, and those inside the classroom are not always safe.
This is how a nation murders its future without firing a single official shot. First, it fails to educate its children. Then it fails to protect the few still trying to learn. Then it gives speeches about inclusion.
The Tinubu government must understand this clearly: Children’s Day messages will not erase the image of abducted children. Promises will not comfort parents whose children are missing. Political ambition will not cover the shame of a republic that cannot secure its youngest citizens.
Bring the children home. Then secure the schools. Until then, every Children’s Day celebration in Nigeria is a national lie dressed in bright colours.
Anthony Ubani is a leadership and governance expert. He currently serves as the Executive Director of #FixPolitics Africa.
