The unconditional, zero-ransom rescue of the abducted school children and teachers in Oyo State has triggered immense public pressure on the Federal Government.
Regional socio-political blocs, socio-cultural leaders, and desperate families are demanding an identical, intelligence-led offensive to liberate hundreds of citizens still languishing in terrorist enclaves across Northern Nigeria.
While a wave of relief followed the joint military, police, and Department of State Services (DSS) breakthrough that cleared out the Al-Qaeda-linked cell in the Old Oyo National Park, northern stakeholders maintain that national security victories must not be lopsided.
Groups including the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) have challenged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to urgently deploy the exact asymmetric strategy—which involved tracking and arresting the core family networks and wives of the bandits—to resolve deep-seated hostage crises in Borno, Kwara, Kaduna, and Zamfara states.
Borno parents demand equal focus
In Borno State, the news of the Oyo rescue has magnified the heartbreak of families whose children were taken during separate, brutal school invasions in the Askira/Uba Local Government Area earlier this year.
Terrorists raided Mussa Primary and Junior Secondary School on May 15, dragging away 42 pupils.
Weeks later, on June 29, another faction stormed Government Day Secondary School in Lassa, abducting 36 students and an instructor.
Currently, 78 Borno students remain deep within the Sambisa and Lake Chad axes under complete informational blackout.
“Since they took my daughter, Esther, and her fellow students, we have not received any information from the authorities,” Ibrahim Millam, a representative of the Lassa parents, told Sunday PUNCH.
“We commend the rescue of the Oyo students, but please, our children should not be allowed to die in captivity. We are not at peace.”
The Kwara forest emergency
The successful raid has also focused a spotlight on Kwara State, where 176 women and children remain missing following a horrific assault on the Woro and Nuku farming communities in the Kaiama Local Government Area nearly six months ago.
That attack left over 200 residents dead and entire villages razed. The kidnappers subsequently released videos threatening mass executions if structural demands were not met. Despite the deployment of specialised tactical teams to Kwara North, family members state that operational progress has completely stalled.
“We know the government has the capacity and resources to rescue our people,” argued community leader Comrade M.Z. Shero in a joint appeal to the National Security Adviser. “Every hour counts. The Oyo operation proves that strong cooperation between state and federal forces works. Replicate it here.”
Socio-political groups slam ‘reactive’ governance
The Northern Elders Forum took a harsher stance on the military’s celebrations. NEF National Publicity Secretary, Prof. Abubakar Jiddere, argued that the successful operation in the South-West does not erase the federal government’s fundamental failure to secure public schools in the first place.
“The government should have prevented the abduction of schoolchildren in the first instance,” Jiddere noted. “If the government can provide adequate security, nobody should be subjected to kidnapping. I don’t know why the government is celebrating. Why should children be kidnapped? The government has woefully failed these children.”
Concurrently, the Arewa Consultative Forum, through Prof. Tukur Muhammad-Baba, urged the Armed Forces to launch a sustained, border-to-border sweep. The ACF emphasised that no citizen should endure torture in illegal forest camps, urging the military high command to eliminate the scourge across the federation without geopolitical bias.
