A coordinated wave of terror targeted at classrooms in both the South-West and the North-East has stoked fear among many who are slowly coming to terms with a security crisis that has been left unattended for years.
Two weeks ago, scores of children from Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State and the Mussa District in Borno State were abducted on the same day and tortured, exposing the collapse of security architecture across the nation. It also showed that the South West has become the latest epicentre of an escalated wave of banditry, kidnapping for ransom, and farmer-herder conflicts, fueling concerns that a region once regarded as a safe haven has slowly fallen from grace.
Schoolchildren are the greatest casualty of this shift. Data tracked by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, ACLED, reports 2,416 school children kidnapped across 26 school attacks and 13 states. In Oyo State, children between
