Ezekwesili links escalating insecurity, mass school abductions to “cancerous” corruption

Former Minister of Education and co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls Movement, Oby Ezekwesili, has blamed Nigeria’s worsening insecurity and recurring mass abductions of schoolchildren on what she calls “cancerous, systemic corruption” eating deep into the nation’s institutions.

In a post on her X handle on Monday, Ezekwesili said corruption had hollowed out Nigeria’s foundational values to the point that critical institutions including the military and the judiciary are now “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.

She lamented that despite years of warnings about the consequences of ignoring good governance, Nigeria is now confronting the full weight of institutional collapse.

Quoting data from UNICEF and Save the Children, Ezekwesili revealed that more than 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.

After over a decade of advocacy following the 2014 Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction, Ezekwesili said outrage “no longer feels adequate,” arguing that the constant kidnappings are no longer isolated incidents but clear signs of state failure.

“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 to a people whose empathy has been steadily eroded,” she said.

Ezekwesili stressed that the persistent attacks amount to “proof of state collapse in its most basic duty, the protection of our greatest human asset: our children.”

She argued that ten years after Chibok, the Federal Government could no longer claim ignorance or inexperience.
“What we have is deliberate negligence, and deliberate negligence is a crime,” she declared.

According to her, any government that continues to fail at rescuing abducted children or securing schools “accepts that it governs without legitimacy.”

“Enough said,” she concluded.