NIGERIA: Former Minister of Education and co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls Movement, Oby Ezekwesili, has blamed Nigeria’s worsening insecurity and recurring mass abductions of schoolchildren on what she calls a deeply entrenched corruption that has hollowed out national institutions.
In a post on her X handle, Ezekwesili said corruption has eroded the nation’s core values to the point where vital institutions including the military and the judiciary have become compromised and unable to fulfil their responsibilities.
She described these institutions as having been drained of the ideals on which they were founded, leaving them too weak to protect citizens.
Reflecting on years of unheeded warnings about bad governance, she noted that Nigeria is now facing the consequences of long-term institutional decay. Citing data from UNICEF and Save the Children, she highlighted the alarming number of student abductions: more than 1,680 students taken in 70 attacks between 2014 and 2022, and another 816 kidnapped in 22 incidents between 2023 and November 2025.
Ezekwesili said the persistent kidnappings represent a collapse of state responsibility rather than isolated security failures.
According to her, the latest abducted students are victims not only of terrorists but of a political class that has failed to act decisively. She argued that the diminishing national outrage reflects a society whose empathy has weakened over time.
She insisted that constant attacks on schools expose a state unable to perform its most basic duty: protecting children.
After a decade since the Chibok abduction, she said the government can no longer claim ignorance or inexperience, stressing that ongoing failures amount to deliberate negligence, which she described as a crime.
Ezekwesili concluded that any government that does not rescue abducted children or secure schools undermines its own legitimacy, adding that the time for excuses has passed.
