Implacable terrorists have extended the wave of hideous attacks on schools to the South-West of Nigeria, a tailspin that is loaded with grave consequences. They invaded three schools in Oyo State penultimate Friday where they whisked away a total of about 39 pupils/students, including a two-year old, and seven teachers. The victims included a secondary school principal, Alamu Folake.
The attacks were coordinated. The motorcycle-riding daredevils simultaneously invaded Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Yawota; Community High School and L.A. Primary School, all in Ahoro-Esinele, Oriire Local Government Area in Ogbomoso axis of Oyo State, and abducted the victims.
Though bandits had been operating in the South-West for some time, this is about their first time of attacking schools in Southern Nigeria. Pupils/students’ abductions had before now been restricted to the North.
The trend must not be allowed to recur or continue. The authorities must pull all the stops to prevent further attacks on schools down here because the noxious practice has almost upended the school system in the North.
As expected, the criminal abductions have stirred serious obloquy. Concerned Nigerians have widely condemned the abductions, urging the authorities to immediately rescue the victims and take the bandits apart.
Condemnations, however, mutated into outrage about three days after the abductions when a disturbing video went viral online depicting the horrendous decapitation of one of the abducted teachers, identified as Michael Oyedokun, a mathematics teacher. Commentators flew into a howling rage and poured vitriols on the blood-thirsty goons.
Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, addressed a press conference where he confirmed the killing of the teacher, which he said happened penultimate Sunday. The governor also announced that a joint rescue team made up of soldiers, policemen and local “vigilantes” had been put together to secure the victims’ release.
President Bola Tinubu, through a press statement issued by the presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, condemned the teacher’s killing as “babaric,”and commiserated with the governor as well as the affected families.
The Presidency confirmed that security agencies had been deployed to track the perpetrators and rescue the victims. The statement added that “Security operatives are working around the clock to rescue the victims and apprehend the bandits and their collaborators within the community.”
Six suspects, according to Makinde, have already been arrested. They include alleged informants and logistics suppliers to the kidnappers. The governor also hinted that the state is willing to “listen” to the abductors to secure the children’s safe release. The state, he emphasized, will however not surrender to terror.
True, the rescue of the victims requires some tact to avoid imperiling them because the criminals will certainly use them as human shields to avoid attacks from security forces. However, the merciless criminals should not be coddled, pampered or mollified in any way.
Non-kinetic approach hardly flies with them. That approach has proved futile in the attempt to stop insurgency and banditry in the North because the terrorists are mercurial in temperament and caparicious in character. They are purely villains. They cannot be trusted to keep to agreements or show any understanding.
They are bestial and soulless marauders, who have no iota of respect for the sanctity of human life. They are full of bile and hubris. They are largely driven by a voracious desire for larceny, which they carry out through abductions for ransom.
President Tinubu said the incident had made state police now more desirable, urging the National Assembly to fasttrack the legislative process. While state police will be useful in intelligence gathering and complementing security agencies in some areas, it is certainly not the solution to the growing sophistication of the terrorists.
The best tactic to decimate them is a recourse to the kinetic approach shaped by technology- driven fire power. Smoking them out from their forested ‘holes’ and literally roasting them from the sky through massive, relentless and sustained bombardments is the only strategy that can effectively take them apart.
The obvious shift in the terrorists’ operational focus in the South is a serious tinderbox that should be handled with all seriousness. Further abductions of school children must be stopped by all means. It requires maximum force to deal with it.
The federal and state governments as well as the security forces must ally to stop the criminals from replicating in the South the deleterious effect on education, which the recurrent attacks on schools has foisted on the North, so the nation’s educational system is not totally sundered.
Banditry and insurgency have had a devastating effect on school enrollment and attendance across Northern Nigeria, especially in the North-East and North-West regions. Armed attacks on schools, kidnappings of students, destruction of classrooms and fear among parents have forced millions of children out of school.
The statistics are scary. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Nigeria has over 10.5 million out-of-school children, the highest number globally. Most of them are in Northern Nigeria. Some studies estimate that the figure rose to nearly 20 million by 2022 due partly to insecurity, terrorism and banditry.
In Northern Nigeria, school attendance rates are extremely low. Only 53% of children attend primary school in the region. Female attendance rates in the North-East and North-West are just 47.7% and 47.3% respectively.
In 2021, bandit attacks and insurgency forced governments to shut down 11,536 schools across northern states. The closures disrupted learning for about 5.3 million children. In the North-East alone, at least 802 schools remain closed, 497 classrooms were destroyed. Another 1,392 classrooms were damaged by insurgents.
These closures directly reduced enrollment because many parents refused to return their children to unsafe schools.
Since the 2014 abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram, attacks on schools have spread rapidly in the region. Nearly 1,000 students were abducted from schools across Northern Nigeria by 2021.
Between late 2020 and 2021 alone, armed groups abducted more than 700 students from schools in northern states. Parents increasingly withdrew children from school out of fear of kidnapping.
The situation is simply grim. This should not be allowed to happen in the South to save education from total collapse. Even now as the authorities are working to free the abducted Oyo school children and teachers, an unconfirmed report quoted an intel suggesting that kidnappers are planning to attack some communities in Odeda and Imeko/Afon Local Government Areas of of Ogun State in the next one or two weeks.
The village being targeted in Odeda is said to be Bakatari, a border community between Ogun and Oyo States, which is closer to Orile Ilugun, Olofin and Olowo. Imeko town is reportedly being targeted in Imeko/Afon. The town is said to be a borderline community to Oyo State.
The authorities should not allow the frenetic politicking for 2027 to distract them from the maximum attention that the present challenge demands.
First, let the South-West governors rally through their forum,pull resources together and, as a matter of urgency, acquire drones with which the bandits who are holed up in the zone’s forests should be flushed out.
They should also invest heavily in constant Intelligence, Surveillance and Renaissance (ISR) exercises to accurately isolate the terrorists in their locations to avoid civilian casualties in the near-future airstrikes. This may require federal assistance. Governors of other regions should follow suit.
According to the Are Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land, Gani Adams, the South-West forests are already bristling with the vile elements. He said no less than 40 of the zone’s 137 local governments have been infiltrated by bandits. They must be sacked from those forests. They must not be allowed to gain a foothold in the South for the reason cited earlier.
Second, the authorities should continue to partner unconventional security outfits being promoted by non-state actors in the form of local “vigilantes.” Some of them have, as a matter of fact, been very complementary in many theatres of war against insurgents and bandits either in combat situations or in rescuing kidnapped victims. They should be properly and effectively integrated into the anti-terror war.
To this end, the Yoruba Nation agitator, Sunday Adeyemo, a.k.a. Sunday Igboho, should be given a chance to complement the efforts on ground by speedily granting his request for the federal and southwest governments to recognize and register his Iru Ekun Security Network. He has pledged that the outfit is fully prepared to flush criminals out of the forests but awaits government’s imprimatur.
The proposed 50,000-man security force is specifically designed to combat banditry, kidnapping and attacks by rogue herders operating in forests across the South-West and Kwara State.
All other promising non-state actors who are willing to be part of the complementary security network should also be encouraged whenever they come up because our conventional security forces are already stretched thin fighting in many fronts simultaneously.
It should also be noted that new battle fronts are springing up almost on a daily basis because these terrorists keep seeping into Nigeria like torrents through our porous borders and are making inroads into new territories. How many fronts can our conventional forces simultaneously cover?
In many instances, the daredevils would have successfully invaded and literally sacked a community before security agents eventually respond to distress calls! These are glaring loopholes that unconventional security apparati can effectively plug, if they are adequately empowered.
While the fear that they could be weaponised by political leaders for the 2027 elections is not totally misplaced, it is not potent enough to discard them outright. They can be regulated to guard against abuses, just as Governor Makinde had done by signing an executive order regulating such local “vigilantes” in his state.
Combating insecurity is a collective effort. The authorities should, therefore, maximally exploit such unconventional options, with all the famed and believably potent ‘African power’ they parade, where necessary to complement the regular security forces and shore up their numerical strength.
The terrorists must be defeated and decimated at all costs. Let watertight security bulwarks be provided in schools without further delay to prevent further terrorist attacks.
