By Lemmy Ughegbe, PhD
The Federal Government directive ordering the closure of forty-seven Unity Schools, following intelligence reports of impending terrorist attacks, should trouble every Nigerian. The decision may have been intended as a protective measure, but its implications are disturbing.
It signals not only the failure of the state to secure schools but also a dangerous surrender of public space to violent non-state actors who continue to dictate the terms of national life.
This directive followed intelligence gathered by the Department of State Services that terrorists were planning coordinated attacks on schools in Kebbi, Niger and other states. Military personnel were reportedly deployed to some of these schools, but this is where the tragedy deepens.
In Kebbi, soldiers who had been stationed to prevent an attack mysteriously withdrew shortly before terrorists swept in and abducted students. How do soldiers leave a location they were specifically deployed to protect, despite receiving credible intelligence of an imminent attack? This withdrawal cannot be dismissed as a routine operational lapse. It fits into a disturbing pattern in Nigeria’s tragic insecurity timeline.
This is almost the exact script of the Chibok abductions of 2014. Intelligence agencies had foreknowledge. Warnings were issued. Military presence was requested. Yet, at the most critical hour, the school was left exposed. More than two hundred girls were abducted. Many have still not returned. The echoes are chilling and infuriating.
We witnessed a similar pattern in the murder of the then Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige (SAN). Policemen assigned to protect him conveniently abandoned their duty post, allegedly to buy akara, at the exact moment assassins arrived. History continues to repeat itself in the most cynical and tragic ways, as though the nation is condemned to learning nothing from its most painful episodes.
These are not isolated failures. For more than a decade, survivors across Borno, Yobe, Plateau, Kaduna and Benue have recounted how they received messages from Boko Haram or other armed groups announcing the exact date of an impending attack. Villagers sent SOS calls to the military and police days in advance, only for no security forces to show up until the carnage was over.
In some cases, security agents arrived only to help count the dead and move bodies. These testimonies, from community after community, paint a consistent and damning picture of a country whose security architecture is reactive, lethargic and dangerously unreliable.
The Niger State Government has also tried to explain its own role. Officials claim that the Catholic school in which more than three hundred girls were abducted reopened its boarding house in breach of state directives that schools should shut down and not operate hostels because of heightened threats.
Even if this is correct, it does not absolve the state. A government that admits it knew schools were under serious threat cannot wash its hands simply because one institution disobeyed a directive. Enforcement is part of the responsibility.
If the risk was so severe, where were the inspectors, the sanctions, the visible security presence and the early interventions that could have prevented the tragedy? At best, this explanation shares the blame; it cannot remove it.
Seen through this wider lens, the closure of forty-seven Unity Schools is not merely a safety measure. It is an admission of defeat. When a government shuts down schools because it cannot protect them, what message does it send to citizens, to parents and to terrorists?
It says plainly that the Nigerian state no longer controls its own territory. It tells terrorists that their threats are effective. It tells children that education is unsafe. It reinforces the painful reality that in Nigeria, schools have become battlegrounds.
A friend captured this grim symbolism in a scathing post on his social media page. He wrote that the closure of Unity Schools amounts to the government saying that “Boko is now haram”, meaning education is now treated as a sin.
It is a bitter twist on the very ideology that fuelled Boko Haram in the first place, an ideology that declared Western education forbidden. When the same state that claims to be fighting that ideology responds by closing schools, it is hard to argue with his sarcasm.
The more profound tragedy lies in what this says about the Safe School Initiative, launched after the Chibok abductions to prevent precisely this scenario. Billions of naira have been allocated to fortify schools, deploy rapid response units, build perimeter fencing, erect watchtowers, install alarm systems and enhance surveillance.
Yet, in the moment of threat, the state’s instinct was not to activate these structures but to shut the schools and send children home. This raises the unavoidable question. Has the Safe School Initiative failed, or was it never fully implemented?
If our schools remain soft targets ten years and billions of naira later, then something foundational is broken. Nigeria must stop normalising the abnormal. It must stop recycling the same excuses each time citizens are attacked. It must end the long tradition of receiving intelligence reports, ignoring them, withdrawing troops and pretending to be shocked after tragedy occurs.
To be fair, some argue that school closures are not an act of cowardice but a necessary step. In their view, the government should swallow its pride, shut down vulnerable institutions and regroup rather than sit on a high horse and risk more children being abducted.
They insist that there is wisdom in tactical retreat, that pausing academic activities to reassess and restrategise is a lesser evil compared to another mass abduction that could have been avoided.
There is a grain of truth in this argument. No responsible government should gamble with the lives of children merely to appear strong. If security agencies know they cannot, in the immediate term, guarantee safety, then temporary closure may sometimes be the least harmful option. Tactical withdrawal is not, in itself, a crime.
The problem is that in Nigeria, tactical withdrawal too often becomes permanent surrender. We close schools today, issue statements tomorrow, and move on next week, without any credible evidence that the regrouping and restrategising ever truly happened.
The question we must confront is simple. What kind of society closes its schools because criminals threaten them? A society that has surrendered. A society that has lost the courage to defend its children. A society that has abandoned the first responsibility of government, which is the protection of life.
If the government insists that the closures are temporary and strategic, then it must prove this with visible action, not just words. Closures must be followed by concrete improvements in school security, clear timelines for reopening, and a transparent accounting of the new measures taken.
Yet, while the picture is bleak, the state must still be assessed with some balance. The Tinubu administration has indeed intensified military operations across the North and other hot zones. The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, recently highlighted that since May 2023, security agencies have neutralised more than thirteen thousand terrorists, arrested over seventeen thousand suspects and rescued nearly ten thousand abducted victims. These are not insignificant gains.
But these gains sit uncomfortably beside persistent security lapses. They raise a hard question. How can a government capable of such large-scale counter terrorist successes still fail to protect one school with prior intelligence? How do we reconcile the statistics of neutralised terrorists with the haunting images of empty dormitories and weeping parents?
Nigeria’s security crisis is compounded by the destabilisation across the Sahel, where non-state actors acquire sophisticated weapons and slip easily across porous borders. Yet much of the blame also lies within. Weak intelligence coordination, poor command discipline, limited political will and chronic failure to hold security officials accountable all contribute to this endless cycle of tragedy.
Beyond these failures, the government must resist the temptation to silence public outrage. Citizens have every right to demand accountability when children are abducted due to preventable lapses. Calling such criticism unpatriotic is dangerous. The real threat to national stability is not public anger, but the state’s inability to prevent these horrors.
Closing schools provides no lasting solution. The only sustainable response is comprehensive security reform, complete transparency, and accountability for operational misconduct, starting with an honest explanation of why soldiers withdrew from their duty post in Kebbi despite credible warnings, and why longstanding intelligence has so often been ignored.
Nigeria must choose courage over excuses, competence over complacency and accountability over rhetoric. The closure of Unity Schools must not become another footnote in a long list of unlearned lessons. It must be the turning point.
Children deserve protection, not apologies. Parents deserve reassurance, not fear. Terrorists deserve justice, not an open field. And Nigerians deserve a state that defends its children as fiercely as it defends its pride. Until then, the future remains uncertain and the nation’s promise incomplete.
Dr Lemmy Ughegbe, FIMC, CMC writes from Abuja.
Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
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