Government must do more to secure and protect the people, writes OLUDAYO TADE
This year, the Children’s Day and the Eid Al-dha festival was celebrated on the same day. While the former is used to engender and protect the welfare of children, the latter (Festival of the sacrifice) is to honour the act of willingness of prophet Ibrahim who wanted to sacrifice his son in obedience to God’s command. But God is kind. He realized that children are not animals that should be slaughtered. Hence, animal was used to replace Ishmael who would have been slaughtered. God values children’s lives. Do we? How do we protect our children and show them that we are capable of protecting and nurturing them rightly? As I struggle with the answers to these questions, I remembered the 46 children and seven teachers Ahoro-Esiele/Yawota in Oriire local government area of Oyo state on 16 May 2026. They had planned their day to learn but were captured and coerced into the forests. The agrarian community went into confusion as automatic rifles bellowed into their hearing. A teacher who tried to escape was shot dead. The Okada owner who would not trade his means of survival with the terrorists was not spared for daring to challenge the jihadists. The terrorists came prepared and must have been lurking around the community for a while. As combined forces trailed the marauders, they sacrificed the mathematics teacher, Michael Oyedokun in the most gruesome way designed to halt their chase and forced captives to do videos where they pleaded with the government to jettison kinetic approach but embrace non-kinetic negotiation strategy so that they could make it out of the forest alive.
