A former Minister of Education and co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls Movement, Oby Ezekwesili, has attributed the country’s deepening insecurity and repeated mass abductions of schoolchildren to what she described as “cancerous, systemic corruption” that has crippled the country’s institutions.
In a post via her X handle on Monday, Ezekwesili said corruption had so eroded Nigeria’s foundational values that key institutions, including the military and judiciary, had become “terribly compromised and incapable of delivering on their mandate.”
She wrote, “Endemic corruption gradually ate up the very values on which they were founded and rendered them the impotent institutions we now know.”
She noted that despite years of warnings about the consequences of ignoring good governance, the country was now dealing with the full impact of institutional decay.
“The latest group of abducted children are not just hostages of terrorists; they are hostages of the unforgivable failure of governments and a political class that refuse to be moved, and to a people whose empathy has been steadily eroded,” she said.
Citing data from UNICEF and Save the Children, Ezekwesili said more than 1,680 students were abducted in 70 attacks between 2014 and 2022, while another 816 students were taken in 22 attacks between 2023 and November 2025.
After more than a decade of advocacy following the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in 2014, Ezekwesili said outrage “no longer feels adequate,” describing the recurring kidnappings as evidence of state failure rather than isolated security breaches.
Ezekwesili stressed that the persistent attacks were “proof of state collapse in its most basic duty, the protection of our greatest human asset: our children.”
She argued that after 10 years since the Chibok abduction, the Federal Government could no longer claim ignorance or a learning curve.
“What we have is deliberate negligence, and deliberate negligence is a crime,” she declared.
Ezekwesili added that any government that continues without rescuing abducted children or adequately securing schools “accepts that it governs without legitimacy.”
“Enough said,” she concluded.