The killing of teacher Michael Oyedokun, who was beheaded by his abductors, is a sad sign, ominous as darkness falling at peak noonday. On Friday, he had been abducted along with six colleagues and 25 school children from Community High School, Ahoro-Esinele, and Baptist Nursery and Primary School in the Ogbomoso Yawota area of Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State. It was bad enough that in our society, schoolteachers and educators are already an endangered species due to the embarrassingly poor remuneration that legitimises their exploitation by both public and private employers. Now, it is even a far worse development that the same set of impoverished labourers become collateral damage in a kidnapping industry that needs a spectacular action like public beheading to trigger public outrage and push the government to urgently address their ransom demands.
We should be afraid because the signs this development portends are foreboding. Something dark looms on the horizon, and mass kidnapping of school children in the southwest—the previously fabled safer region—is the harbinger. Mass abduction of school children now seems persistent, unfortunately. From that first kidnapping of the Chibok girls in 2014, raiding schools for poor school children has somehow become dangerously routine. Hardly a month passes now without reports of mass abduction, and schools are one of the targets because the abductors know that victimising innocent children compels public sentiment. The more children they can abduct, the heftier the payday. Now, it has become almost impossible to keep track of the spate of abduction attacks facing the country from every corner without a respite. How long ago was it that the victims to be rescued were from the Catholic school in Niger State, where 300 students and 12 members of staff were abducted? Or the one involving 24 schoolgirls in Kebbi State? Or the many instances of youth corps members and individuals whose kidnapping stories are too commonplace to even be newsworthy? How many instances have been recorded in Kwara or Borno now? The other day, they were negotiating the ransom for the victims in Kwara. Some of the 176 victims are still in the custody of their abductors now, waiting for a government already distracted by the 2027 elections to remember them and eventually rescue them.
