Daily Trust Editorial, Thursday May 28, 2026
In other climes where the rights of children are recognised, protected and preserved, they earnestly look forward to the annual Children’s Day celebration, which is observed in Nigeria on May 27th every year. In Nigeria today, most children have no reason to celebrate because their basic rights such as education, medicare, and protection against all forms of threats to life have never been guaranteed by the country’s leaders beyond lip service. The recent abduction by gunmen of dozens of schoolchildren in Borno and Oyo states is a classic case of the vulnerability they are perpetually exposed to.
Yesterday, Wednesday, May 27, 2026 was the National Children’s Day in Nigeria. Whether the average Nigeran child has anything to celebrate is a question to which Nigerian leaders as the country’s president, as governors, ministers, and legislators should provide answers. The minister of defence and the service chiefs should explain why over 40 schoolchildren, many of them within the age bracket of 2-9 years, should mark the children’s day in the hands of kidnappers. Northern governors should explain why they have, over the years, remain indifferent to the plight of the out-of-school children in a region associated with low literacy level. At a recent roundtable session of the Education World Forum (EWF) which held in London, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, remarked that Nigeria’s “northwest and northeast regions have “the lowest literacy and numeracy rates nationwide.”
On Friday May 15, 2026, more than 40 children were abducted from Government Day Secondary School and Central Primary School in Mussa in Askira-Uba local government area of Borno State. Eyewitness account said the gunmen used the children as human shields while fleeing on motorcycles; preventing security operatives from opening fire. Mussa is a remote community bordering the Sambisa Forest, a notorious enclave of Boko Haram insurgents.
During May 15, 2026 attack on schools in Oriire local government area of Oyo State, gunmen on motorcycles attacked a set of schools including Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Yawota; Community Grammar School, Ahoro-Esinle; and the LEA primary school in the area. In the coordinated attacks, one staff member was killed, while a principal, teachers and several pupils were abducted. Following the incident, the Oyo State Government ordered the closure of schools in the affected communities.
Speaking at a Joint Ministerial Press Briefing on the National Children’s Day 2026, held on Friday May 15, 2026, the same day the school children were abducted; the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, announced the theme for the 2026 children’s day celebration as “Future Now: Promoting Inclusion for Every Nigerian Child.” She officially unveiled activities marking the 2026 National Children’s Day Celebration in Nigeria with a strong national call for inclusion, protection, family strengthening, and investment in the future of children.
Education and health remain two most critical areas in which Nigerian children have inexcusable predicaments to endure. In many states, school buildings are dilapidated, workshop equipment are either obsolete or non-existent. Where parents cannot provide classroom furniture, children sit on bare floors or share desks; sometimes under a tree. Teachers spend most part of the academic year organising strikes rather than imparting knowledge; an action they often blame on poor remuneration or unpaid salaries. These challenges plausibly explain why children nowadays, unlike in the past, scarcely look up to the occasion of children’s day.
May 27, 2026 was also a Sallah day; it is apt to ask of what Nigerian children celebrate annually whenever they converge at various sporting arenas and stadia across the country on children’s day. As an annual ritual, they naively match on the fields to celebrate schools without qualified teachers, classrooms without chalk boards, or football pitches without a ball? Children experiencing these deficits can only celebrate failure, neglect or abuse (if they have to celebrate); but not happiness or success. Yet, Nigerian leaders call children left to endure this huge set of challenges ‘leaders of tomorrow.’ The country’s leaders must stop paying lip service to the rights and critical needs of the Nigerian children by sparing a thought for them and their needs.
While we sympathise and empathise with parents of the abducted children in Borno and Oyo states, Daily Trust calls on the government to safely rescue all the kidnapped children and hand them over unharmed to their parents or guardians. Believing that children and youths in Nigeria constitute over 45 per cent of country’s population, there’s need for child development and protection to remain strategic to national development. Government should be seen to give the desired attention to the rights of the Nigerian child; providing it with all the basic needs of life required to guarantee a strong, reliable and sustainable future for Nigeria.
Happy Children’s Day from the Daily Trust newspaper to all Nigerian children!
