In his Children’s Day 2026 message on Wednesday, May 27, the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, wrote on X: “Happy Children’s Day to every child across Nigeria! Today, we celebrate the voices, dreams, and limitless potential of our young people.” He went on to add that “ensuring the safety, protection, and wellbeing of every Nigerian child is a top priority of the Federal Government.”

Happy Children’s Day to every child across Nigeria! 💚🤍💚

Today, we celebrate the voices, dreams, and limitless potential of our young people.

Under the Renewed Hope Agenda of President @officialABAT , GCFR, we remain committed to ensuring every child has access to quality… pic.twitter.com/Pkb7oGDx9g

— Dr. Tunji Alausa (@DrTunjiAlausa) May 27, 2026

While government officials like Alausa posted celebratory messages online like all was well, dozens of schoolchildren in Borno and Oyo States spent this year’s Children’s Day in captivity after being abducted from their schools earlier in May. In Borno, armed groups kidnapped at least 42 pupils from schools in Askira Uba and Chibok Local Government Areas (LGAs). Chibok, which is ground zero for mass schoolchildren abductions in Nigeria, is no stranger to incidents of this nature. The community gained global attention in April 2014 after more than 270 schoolgirls were violently seized by Boko Haram militants from the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok. A decade later, as of April 2024, 82 of those girls remained missing and presumed captive.

Only a day after the Borno attacks, on Friday, May 15, armed men riding motorcycles invaded the Yawota and Esinele communities in Oriire LGA of Oyo State and abducted pupils and teachers from L.A. Primary School, Community High School, and Baptist Church Primary School. At least 32 members of the communities were taken, including schoolchildren as young as two years old, as residents were unable to call for help early due to poor Internet access. Eighteen primary school pupils and seven secondary school students were among those seized.

Two weeks later, those children in Oyo and Borno remain in captivity.

On Friday, May 29, the kidnappers from the Oyo schools released a video recorded on May 27, Children’s Day, featuring the principal of Community High School, Esinele, Mrs F.R. Alamu, pleading to President Bola Tinubu and Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, to negotiate with the terrorists to secure their release.

“You [government] don’t need force. All you have to do is negotiate with them [kidnappers] and release us. We are in the cold. We are under the sun. We are under the rain. The children and adults… We are begging you, don’t let them waste our lives,” Mrs Alamu cried out.

The t£rr0r!sts have released a new video of the abd uct£d principal, Mrs Alamu begging for help from The Governor and The President. She revealed that the terror! sts are already getting impat!ent and they might be kp@!d. The teachers and the children are under the sun and the… pic.twitter.com/I0uJgZ3ayZ

— Oyindamola🙄 (@dammiedammie35) May 29, 2026

Similarly, a teacher, who is also a nursing mother, held her baby as she was forced to beg for their release. In her plea, she also acknowledged that the day was Children’s Day.

Another newly released video of the teacher that backed a baby in the first video that was released weeks ago and now she’s pleading again for help from the Governor and President …. This is heartbr£aking 💔💔💔 https://t.co/6HqB1TaJ1H pic.twitter.com/MPPjwLEpIT

— Oyindamola🙄 (@dammiedammie35) May 29, 2026

So, on the same day these captured children were supposed to join their peers across Nigeria and the world to celebrate the day designated for them, their principal and teacher were being forced to record hostage videos, begging for them to live.

Even those who are not in captivity had little to celebrate, haunted by the knowledge that their mates are in bondage and that they themselves are vulnerable. In separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria in Ibadan, parents and children spoke about marking the occasion in fear and despair. An entrepreneur, Mr Wahid Lawal, said he had to take his four and six-year-old girls out because there was no way to explain to them that being outside for the celebration was not safe. “If my daughters were a bit older, we would be at home, because, really, the situation of things hardly calls for celebration,” Lawal said. Bolanle Oladipo, 11, said this was her least memorable celebration, revealing that her father had earlier promised to take her to a resort before the plan changed. “I wish what happened had never happened. All children in Nigeria would have been celebrating happily,” she said.

The Children’s Day celebration that was supposed to be a moment of joy became, for millions of Nigerian families, a quiet reckoning with how far the country has fallen short of its obligations to its youngest citizens. The Minister of Education posted his cheerful message. The President issued his familiar assurance that all will be well. Governors released their statements of solidarity. And yet, as the festivities went on, dozens of children sat in some forest or hideout, afraid, hungry, and far from home, their childhoods interrupted by a crisis the government has consistently failed to contain.

On this Children’s Day, I celebrate every Nigerian child. I celebrate the child who is excelling in school. I celebrate the child who is learning a trade. I celebrate the child living with disability and still pressing forward with courage. I celebrate the child who has lost much… pic.twitter.com/NHe6rvibQC

— Bola Ahmed Tinubu (@officialABAT) May 27, 2026

That is the real story of Children’s Day 2026. Not the marches in the stadiums. Not the speeches about limitless potential. The real story is Bolanle Oladipo spending her least memorable Children’s Day because her father decided that going out was no longer worth the risk. The real story is Christianah Akanbi, two years old, among the abducted in Oyo. A child barely old enough to walk, now in captivity. The real story is a teacher beheaded, his death filmed and circulated, a message intended to terrorise every family that dares send a child to school.

What makes this especially untenable is the pattern. This is not a surprise attack in an ungoverned space. It is the continuation of more than a decade of identical failures — Chibok, Dapchi, Kagara, Zamfara, Kankara, Kebbi, Niger State, and now Oyo and Chibok again.

The implication is stark: wherever children are in Nigeria — whether in the South-West, the North-West, the North-East, or the North-Central — their safety is far from guaranteed. And that is no way to live.

Schools were supposed to be safe spaces. Instead, they have become hunting grounds, and the government has consistently failed in its duty to protect some of the most vulnerable among us.

Nigerian families are no longer moved by the rhetoric. “Children’s safety is our top priority” has been said so many times it has lost all meaning. What parents want is simple: their children in a classroom, not in captivity. Children’s Day on a resort trip, not under the shadow of abduction. The government must dispense with the assurances and start delivering results. That is the only thing that matters now.