Today, relief is the prevailing emotion in the country, and on this campus in particular. After an agonizing, almost endless wait, the thirty-nine innocent school children and seven teachers abducted on May 15, 2026, from the Oriire Local Government Area have finally been released. Closer to home, after nearly four weeks of terrifying silence, it has emerged that Tomisin, a 300-level Law student at the University of Ibadan and the National Secretary of the Scripture Union Campus Fellowship, Nigeria, has also regained her freedom, along with others abducted in Okigwe, Imo State.
Yes, there is cause for celebration. But as we rejoice on our WhatsApp statuses, a chilling question remains: how did we get to a point where a citizen’s safe return from the woods is treated as a miracle rather than a basic state obligation?
In treating their release as a final victory, we crown ourselves principal officers in this failing system. absorb ourselves into a failing system. The reality is that Tomisin and the victims of Oriire are simply survivors out of countless kidnapping cases. Across Nigeria, kidnapping has mutated from an occasional anomaly into a thriving, unchecked enterprise that seems to be growing into an industry in itself. It is a persistent shadow that hangs over every highway, every community, and now, every academic institution. The primary failure belongs to a government that has consistently treated security as a luxury to be managed rather than a fundamental right to be guaranteed. We are all cogs in a failed system that only reforms its mechanism after the blood has been spilled.
Honestly, walking across the campus over the last few weeks, you would never even have guessed that a student had been swallowed by the dark. The lecture halls remained packed, exams started and ended, and the institutional calendar just kept moving. This normalcy is a dangerous illusion, but it is an illusion engineered by state failure. When the government defaults on its primary duty to protect its citizens, it forces the public into a forced moving on, a coping mechanism engineered only by neglect.
And through what lens shall we view our student leaders, faced with a challenge far beyond the usual transport fee hike struggles or affordable dining debates. To pin blame on them will be to absolve those more directly responsible for the secuirity of life and property, and one must commend their mature management of on-campus panic.There still remains a need for diplomacy and quiet engagement in situations such as this, but this diplomacy within a broken system has limits, and student leaders cannot face this on their own. For this reason, it is important that the government not mistake our collective calm for muted compliance when our own are hurt.
Moving forward, the Students’ Union needs the full, active backing of the entire student body to transition from quiet diplomacy into strategic advocacy. We must stand firmly behind our leaders as they use their massive platform to demand that the state fulfill its obligations. Security shouldn’t be handled with passive administrative protocol; it requires us to stand united. It is time for us to support our Union in launching structured, long-term campaigns that force the government to secure our campuses and transit routes.
Their release is a miracle, but it is also a severe indictment of the state. This is not a call for chaos; it is a refusal to let the government off the hook just because the immediate danger has passed. True solidarity means ensuring that the names of the victims do not fade into the background of our daily routines the moment they return. We must collectively demand that the state treats security as an unconditional right. If we do not break this culture of silence and hold the authorities accountable today, we must prepare ourselves for the day when the next empty chair belongs to us.
Akinsuru Temiloluwa