Atiku Demands Urgent Action Over Oyo Schoolchildren Abduction, Slams Tinubu Government Response

(Atiku Abubakar(R) and President Bola Tinubu(L). Photo by ICIR Nigeria)

Former Vice President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has called on President Bola Tinubu to immediately deploy all available security and intelligence resources to secure the unconditional release of schoolchildren and teachers abducted in Oyo State.

He warned that any government incapable of protecting schoolchildren has failed one of the most fundamental responsibilities of leadership.

Speaking through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku described reports that government officials had visited the families of victims with bags of rice and other relief items as not only tone-deaf but morally reprehensible amounting to an open admission of failure.

He stressed that the affected families are not in need of food packages, but urgent action and decisive leadership. In his words, parents whose children have been ripped away from them are not asking for rice they are asking for their children back.

He argued that what grieving families need is a government with the capacity and will to rescue their loved ones and hold the perpetrators accountable.

Atiku described the abduction as yet another painful indication that under the Tinubu administration, insecurity has stopped being treated as a crisis and has instead become an accepted feature of daily life in Nigeria.

He condemned what he characterised as the audacity with which criminals now operate, contrasting it with what he described as an underwhelming government response.

He raised the alarm that insecurity has been so normalised in Nigeria that many parents now factor ransom payments into their household budgets alongside school fees a situation he said reflects a deeply troubling state of affairs.

He cautioned that without real consequences for those targeting innocent Nigerians, other criminal groups would only be encouraged to act with even greater boldness, putting more communities at risk.

Atiku concluded by saying that Nigerians have grown weary of excuses and hollow speeches from an administration that appears unable to carry out its most basic duty.

He insisted that if the government can no longer guarantee the safety of Nigerian children, it owes the public the honesty to acknowledge its failures rather than compound the pain of grieving families with token gestures.