Former Minister of Education and founder of the School of Politics, Policy and Governance (SPPG), Dr. Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili, has condemned President Bola Tinubu’s administration over its inability to protect schoolchildren, describing the failure as “the highest acceptance of governing without legitimacy.”
Ezekwesili, in a statement issued on Monday, said Nigeria’s persistent wave of school abductions reflects a total collapse of state responsibility and a disturbing erosion of governing credibility.
“Failing to protect Nigerian children is the highest acceptance of governing without legitimacy, Mr President,” she said.
According to her, the worsening insecurity and serial abductions of students are symptoms of deep-rooted governance failure enabled by long-standing corruption within Nigeria’s political system.
“Cancerous level systemic corruption that metastasised into our country’s political culture is totally imploding Nigeria,” she said, adding that the degradation of the country’s key institutions — including the military and judiciary — is a direct result of unchecked corruption.
“Our institutions are now so terribly compromised and incapable of delivering on their mandate because endemic corruption gradually ate up the very values on which they were founded,” she stated.
Ezekwesili lamented that warnings about declining governance standards were repeatedly ignored.
“Oh, how often we warned that the disregard for Good Governance would be the undoing of our country!” she said.
Citing data from UNICEF and Save the Children, she highlighted the scale of Nigeria’s school kidnapping crisis:
More than 1,680 students abducted in 70 attacks between 2014 and 2022.
Another 816 students kidnapped in 22 attacks between 2023 and November 2025.
After more than a decade of advocacy — including her leadership in the #BringBackOurGirls movement — Ezekwesili said the ongoing crisis has reached a devastating point where “outrage no longer feels adequate.”
“The latest group of abducted children are not just hostages of terrorists; they are hostages of the unforgivable failure of governments and the political class that refuse to be moved,” she added, noting that the empathy of the Nigerian public has also eroded over time.
She insisted that the abductions cannot be trivialised as isolated “incidents,” arguing that they signify state failure in its most fundamental duty: protecting citizens — especially children.
“After ten years since ChibokGirls, the Government of Nigeria has forfeited any claim to ignorance, surprise, or learning curve. What we have is deliberate negligence, and deliberate negligence is a crime,” she said.
Directly addressing President Tinubu, Ezekwesili declared that continuing to govern without rescuing abducted students and securing schools amounts to governing without legitimacy.
“Let it be known that to continue to govern without rescuing all our abducted children and protecting the rest in their schools is the highest acceptance of the President of Nigeria that he governs without Legitimacy. Enough said,” she concluded.
Ezekwesili co-founded the #BringBackOurGirls movement following the abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 — an event that marked the beginning of widespread mass kidnappings targeting schools in northern Nigeria.
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