By Daniel Nduka Okonkwo
On October 1, 2026, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu delivered his 66th Independence Day address to the nation under the theme, From Reform to Prosperity. He spoke of Nigeria’s long journey since 1960, of the age of reform having done its work, and of an age of prosperity that must now become the lived experience of Nigerians.
But as published, the address made no specific mention of the children of Mussa and Lassa. There was no mention of the 42 pupils abducted from Mussa in Askira-Uba Local Government Area of Borno State on May 15. There was no mention of the 36 students taken from Government Day Secondary School, Lassa, on June 29 while they were writing their National Examinations Council, NECO, examinations. There was no mention of their parents, who have spent months waiting, grieving, and pleading for their children to come home, and no public update on what the Federal Government was doing to secure their release.
The omission is not, by itself, proof that the government has abandoned the children. But it raises a question that deserves an answer. After months of captivity, what place do these 78 children now occupy in Nigeria’s national security priorities?
For a presidential Independence Day address, the expectations went beyond economic policy and national celebration. Families whose children were being held captive could reasonably expect recognition of their suffering, an assurance that the government had not forgotten them and, where operationally possible, an indication of what was being done to bring their children home.
As Independence Day celebrations filled Abuja with speeches, ceremony, and official optimism, families in southern Borno were confronting another night of uncertainty. For them, independence was not an abstraction. It was a question of whether their children were still alive.
The first attack happened on May 15, 2026. Armed attackers invaded Mussa Primary and Junior Secondary School in Mussa, a community in Askira-Uba on the fringes of the Sambisa Forest. Forty-two pupils were widely reported to have been abducted, although Governor Babagana Zulum and some parents have since referred to 44. Some of the children were toddlers, with reports indicating that children as young as two were among those taken.
The attack occurred on the same day that armed men abducted pupils and teachers in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State. But the two stories would take dramatically different paths. In Oyo, a security operation brought the victims home after 56 days. In Borno, the families were left waiting.
Then came another attack in Borno. On June 29, terrorists stormed Government Day Secondary School, Lassa, in the same local government area, while students were sitting their NECO examinations. According to the Borno State Government, 36 students were taken, comprising 25 girls and 11 boys, and at least one teacher was also abducted. The two incidents left 78 schoolchildren reported to be in captivity.
They are not the only captives whose release is being sought. Governor Zulum and the Hawul Askira-Uba Elders Forum have also drawn attention to 38 other people reportedly abducted along the Buratai-Maiduguri road, bringing the broader number of people whose release is being demanded to 116.
By August 22, when the 100-day mark had been reached, families and community elders were appealing to President Tinubu and Governor Zulum at a press conference in Abuja. By September, parents were threatening to take their protest to the Presidential Villa. By October 1, the children were still absent from their homes.
Perhaps the most disturbing element of the Lassa case is that there has been tangible evidence that at least some of the children were alive after their abduction. On July 18, Borno State Commissioner for Education, Science, and Technology Abba Wakilbe disclosed that the state government had received a 15-second proof-of-life video, and he played the footage during the Borno State Education Summit in Maiduguri.
Those who saw it said the footage showed students seated on the ground, some wearing the uniform of Government Day Secondary School, Lassa, while two armed men stood behind them holding a flag bearing Arabic inscriptions. Wakilbe said 36 Lassa students remained in captivity. Officials declined journalists’ requests to release the video.
The commissioner also disclosed that the government had no information about the pupils abducted from Mussa. Earlier, when he was asked about the Mussa children, he declined to comment and described the matter as a security issue to be addressed by the security agencies.
That leaves serious investigative questions. What information did the video contain? Was its location analysed? Were voices, terrain, vegetation, clothing, weapons, accents, or other identifiable features examined by intelligence agencies? Was the video transferred to the Nigerian Army, the Department of State Services, the National Intelligence Agency, or other relevant agencies?
Was a ransom demand attached to it, and were negotiations taking place? If so, who was negotiating? And if there were no negotiations, what intelligence operation was being conducted to locate the children? The public deserves answers, particularly because the government itself confirmed the existence of the evidence.
The comparison with Oyo is unavoidable. On May 15, armed men abducted pupils, teachers, and a school principal from schools in Oriire Local Government Area. The victims spent 56 days in captivity, and on July 10 the Presidency announced that all of them had been rescued. President Tinubu described the rescue as the outcome of a military, police, and intelligence-driven operation and commended the security agencies, while his spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, said there was no quid pro quo.
The Oyo rescue demonstrates that the Nigerian state possesses the capacity to mount a large, intelligence-driven operation to recover abducted schoolchildren. The unresolved Borno cases, therefore, raise questions about the intelligence, operational constraints, resources, and decisions shaping the government’s response. What is currently being done, at what operational level, with what intelligence, with what resources, and with what measurable objective?
The difference in outcomes has become a source of anguish among Borno parents. Ishaku Suya, who led the parents’ protest as chairman of the parents’ group, appealed to President Tinubu to rescue their children as he rescued the Oyo victims. Shuaibu Umaru, chairman of the Mussa Parents of Abductees, also questioned why children abducted in Oyo State were rescued while those from Mussa and Lassa remained in captivity.
The Lassa abduction also raises a question that goes beyond the fate of the 36 students. They were not taken from a deserted highway. They were abducted from a school, reportedly while writing a national examination. That means the attackers were able to penetrate a functioning educational environment, seize students, and withdraw into an insecure area. The incident demands an examination of the security architecture around schools operating in conflict-affected communities.
What security arrangements were in place, and how far away were security personnel? Were there patrols around the examination centre, and had intelligence warned of a possible attack? Were emergency evacuation procedures available, and how long did the attackers remain before withdrawing? These questions should be answered through documents, operational records, and interviews, not speculation.
For more than a decade, Nigeria has invested political attention and resources in protecting schools from attacks. These incidents show how vulnerable that objective remains in some parts of the country. If the government knew Lassa was located in a high-risk conflict environment, what risk assessment governed the decision to conduct examinations there? If security agencies were aware of the threat, what preventive measures were deployed, and if they were not aware, why not? The answers could reveal whether the failure was one of intelligence, deployment, coordination, infrastructure, or command responsibility.
While the Mussa case initially presented a dark information vacuum by mid-July, with traumatised parents confirming to the media that no group had claimed responsibility and no verified ransom demand had been made, the situation has since evolved into a highly publicised crisis. As desperation mounted, some families fell victim to opportunistic scammers demanding money, even as the actual abductors reportedly made no direct approach to initiate negotiations.
After months of forced silence and uncertainty, the parents and community members broke their silence through major public protests, issuing a six-day ultimatum to the Federal Government and threatening to march directly to the Presidential Villa in Abuja. The prolonged silence was further shattered when the House of Representatives formally intervened, adopting an urgent motion calling for federal security agencies to deploy immediate kinetic and intelligence operations to rescue the children, who are now approaching 140 days in captivity near the Sambisa Forest.
This creates a crucial investigative mystery. If there has been no ransom communication, what is the motivation behind holding the children for months? Are they being held as bargaining leverage, moved between locations, or exploited for another purpose, or has the government simply been unable to establish where they are? Those questions should be directed to the security agencies and should not be answered through conjecture.
By September, patience had broken down. In the third week of the month, parents and community members from Mussa and Lassa issued a six-day ultimatum to the Federal Government, demanding the rescue of their children and warning that they would take their protest to the Presidential Villa. The parents were not asking for a press conference. They were asking for their children.
The six-day deadline passed and the children remained missing. Representative Midala Balami, who represents Askira-Uba and Hawul Federal Constituency, condemned the prolonged silence, and the House of Representatives has since called for coordinated operations to secure the release of the 116 victims. The Christian Association of Nigeria in Borno State has also urged the Federal Government to act.
That movement from a rural community in southern Borno towards the gates of the presidency is more than a protest. It is a measure of how far the families believe they have travelled from the centre of government without obtaining an answer.
Then came October 1. In his Independence Day address, President Bola Tinubu made no mention of the 78 children still being held in captivity. It was not an isolated omission. Reports had also noted that his May 29 broadcast marking three years in office did not refer to the school abductions in Oyo and Borno, leaving the families of the missing children once again without a direct acknowledgment from the nation’s highest office.
Any serious investigation must also allow the government to explain what is happening outside public view. There may be intelligence operations that cannot safely be disclosed, negotiations that authorities believe could endanger the children if made public, and operational constraints in the Sambisa corridor that outsiders cannot fully appreciate. In July, the Federal Government said it was working to rescue the Mussa pupils, and on August 22, Governor Zulum assured parents of the President’s commitment while demanding the immediate rescue of the children. The government may also argue that publicly discussing rescue operations could compromise them.
Those are legitimate considerations. But secrecy cannot become a substitute for accountability. The families deserve regular, credible communication about what can safely be disclosed, and the Nigerian public deserves to know whether an active rescue strategy exists. The Presidency, the Defence Headquarters, the DSS, and the Borno State Government are invited to respond to the questions raised in this investigation.
More than four months into the crisis for the Mussa children, a responsible investigation should keep the most important questions alive. Where are the Mussa pupils, and what is the latest verified intelligence on their location? What happened to the 36 Lassa students, and when was the most recent confirmed proof of life? What did the 15-second video reveal, and why was it not accompanied by a publicly explained rescue strategy? What are the abductors demanding, and have ransom demands, prisoner-release demands, or other conditions been communicated?
Which agencies are leading the search, and what resources have been committed? What operational differences explain why Oyo produced a documented rescue while Borno remains unresolved? What has the Borno State Government done since Governor Zulum received formal briefings, and when did President Tinubu receive a comprehensive briefing and what instructions did he issue? Finally, when will the families receive the next verified update? This may be the simplest question, and perhaps the most important.
There is a danger in reporting prolonged kidnappings as numbers. Forty-two. Thirty-six. Seventy-eight. But every number represents a child who had a name, a classroom, a parent, a sibling, a uniform, a schoolbag, and a future. Some of those children were toddlers when they were taken. Others were old enough to sit for national examinations and dream of what would come after secondary school.
Their parents have spoken of sleepless nights and of constantly wondering about the conditions their children face, and they have gone months without knowing whether their children are hungry, sick, injured, frightened, or alive. That is the human cost hidden behind the statistics.
The story of the 78 Borno children should not become another forgotten kidnapping. It deserves an evidence-based investigation into the timeline, intelligence failures, security deployments, government communications, rescue efforts, ransom channels, school protection systems, and the chain of official responsibility.
The central question is no longer whether Nigeria knows these children are missing. The government knows. The families know. The public knows.
What remains unclear is what the Nigerian state knows about their whereabouts, what it has done with that information, and what measurable operation is now being pursued to bring them home.
The children must return home, and the story is unfinished. Nigerians must receive credible answers about what happened to them, but the silence surrounding their captivity remains a national accountability question.
Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is an investigative journalist, human rights advocate, and policy analyst based in Nigeria. He is the founder and publisher of Profiles International Human Rights Advocate (PIHRA), a platform documenting the courage of human rights defenders and examining issues of governance, accountability, security, and fundamental rights.
His reporting on Nigerian governance, security-sector accountability, public finance, and human rights has appeared in Sahara Reporters, Vanguard, Daily Trust, African Defence Forum, Opinion Nigeria, and Daily Intel.
Read more of his work on the PIHRA website:
https://www.profilesinternationalhumanrightsadvocate.com.ng/
For tips, feedback, or collaboration, contact him at dan.okonkwo.73@gmail.com.
