Three schools hit at once. Forty-six people dragged into the bush — 39 of them children, the youngest barely old enough to form sentences, the oldest just 16. Seven teachers seized alongside them.

Armed men stormed a secondary school and two primary schools in the Ahoro Esinele community of Oyo State, southwestern Nigeria, on Friday, in what police described as a “coordinated attack.” By Monday, one abducted teacher had been executed in captivity. A video circulated showing the victim pleading for intervention before he was killed, according to community sources.

The assault was methodical. Governor Seyi Makinde confirmed that seven students were seized from Community Secondary School, while 18 children and seven teachers were taken from First Baptist Primary and Nursery School. A third school, Baptist Nursery and Primary in Yawota, was raided simultaneously. Villagers said the attackers arrived and departed on motorcycles, taking four of them into surrounding forests.

A joint rescue operation by soldiers, police, and local vigilantes ran into improvised explosive devices planted by the kidnappers. Several security operatives were wounded and are receiving treatment, Makinde said. Six suspects have been arrested — alleged informants and logistics suppliers to the abductors. But 45 captives remain in the forest.

Presidential Assurances

President Bola Tinubu condemned the attack as “barbaric” and said the Inspector-General of Police was personally leading what he described as a “tech-driven operation.” The federal government was working with Oyo State, his office said. “We expect a breakthrough soon.”

It is a sentence Nigerian parents have heard many times.

Mass kidnappings by armed groups have become a defining security crisis in Nigeria. Criminal gangs exploit weak security, porous borders, and isolated rural communities to seize students, travellers, and civilians for ransom payments. Schools — concentrations of vulnerable people with minimal protection — are frequent targets.

What sets the Oyo attack apart is geography. The southwest has been largely spared the mass school abductions that have plagued the north and central regions for years. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) warned that the broad daylight invasion of multiple schools showed how rapidly insecurity was spreading beyond its traditional flashpoints.

“This is not merely another security incident,” CAN President Archbishop Daniel Okoh said. “It is a national disgrace and a frightening reminder that organised criminal violence is spreading into parts of the country once considered relatively secure.”

Classrooms Emptied

In Ogbomoso, teachers shut down schools and marched to the local education authority office, carrying placards demanding improved security and safer learning environments. Among the abducted teachers identified by colleagues: Community High School principal Mrs Alamu Folawe, vice principal Mr Ojo Jonathan, and five other staff members, including Mary Akanbi of Yawota Baptist Nursery and Primary School.

A distress video emerged in which Folawe appealed to federal and state authorities to help secure the victims’ release without the use of force. Her husband is a professor at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Ogbomoso, according to a university spokesperson who said staff have been showing solidarity with the family.

Governor Makinde said the situation remained “fluid and difficult” and confirmed that his government was prepared to listen to the abductors’ demands to secure safe release. He also disclosed that surveillance aircraft purchased by the state had arrived in Nigeria and were being reassembled by Chinese manufacturers at a Nigerian Air Force base in Lagos, with deployment expected before the end of June.

For a state that needed those aircraft three days ago, that timeline is cold comfort.

A Cycle Without End

Nigeria’s kidnap epidemic follows a grimly familiar sequence: attack, outrage, presidential condemnation, promises of rescue, and — eventually — quiet ransom payments that finance the next abduction. The CAN statement captured the exhaustion beneath the outrage, saying Nigerians had grown weary of “condolences without consequences and promises without protection.”

Former presidential candidate Gbenga Hashim, who also referenced recent school abductions in Borno State, described the incidents as a “brutal assault” on Nigeria’s future. “Schools must never become theatres of fear,” he said. “The world must not become desensitised.”

When gunmen can coordinate simultaneous raids on three schools, abduct toddlers, execute a captive on camera, and slow the pursuit with explosives — and the president’s response is to promise a breakthrough “soon” — the word carries less weight each time it is deployed.

Forty-five people remain in the forest tonight. Some of them are barely old enough to understand what has happened to them.

Sources