A former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, has blamed the country’s worsening insecurity and repeated mass abductions of schoolchildren on 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.
“Endemic corruption gradually ate up the very values on which they were founded and rendered them the impotent institutions we now know,” she wrote.
The co-convener of the BringBackOurGirls Movement explained that despite years of warnings about the consequences of ignoring good governance, the country was now dealing with the full impact of institutional decay.
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The ex-Minister, while citing data from UNICEF and Save the Children, stated that over 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.
She added that after more than a decade of advocacy amid the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in 2014, outrage no longer feels adequate, describing the recurring kidnappings as evidence of state failure rather than isolated security breaches.
“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 of a people whose empathy has been steadily eroded,” she added.
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Ezekwesili emphasized that the persistent attacks were proof of state collapse in its most basic duty, the protection of the greatest human asset: the children.
According to her, after 10 years since the Chibok abduction, the Federal Government could no longer claim ignorance or a learning curve.
