@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw They went to school. That was their only crime.
Michael Oyedokun showed up to teach. That was his only crime.
And somewhere in a forest in Oyo State tonight, 39 children and 7 teachers are waiting.
Today, May every single one of them come home.
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw So please. Say their names, Talk about them at your Eid table today. Keep making noise until the noise is too loud to ignore.
Because the moment we stop talking about them is the moment they become forgotten
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw I am writing this with a heavy heart and no solutions. I am writing this because silence today feels like betrayal. Because if we let the celebrations drown them out, if we allow them to become just another headline we half remember, we become part of the system that failed them
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw Every child who walks through a school gate deserves to come home. Safety is not a privilege. It is a right. And in Nigeria, that right is being buried.
They deserve freedom. Irrespective of where they are. And not where the system decides they should be.
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw And the cruelest truth? It happened because they were poor. Because they were rural. Because they were invisible to the people whose one job is to protect them. No child deserves this. Not the children of the wealthy. Not the children of the poor. Not children in cities.
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw These children had rights. The right to sit in a classroom without being dragged away. The right to learn. The right to grow up. The right to be children. Every single one of those rights was shattered the moment violence walked through their school gates.
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw Nigeria is tired, I know. This is compassion fatigue. We have been here before. Chibok. Kankara. Kagara. Kebbi. And now Ogbomosho. Tragedy after tragedy until the heart learns to protect itself by moving on faster. Until the next news cycle. Until the next celebration. Until we f
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw That builds roads that make their communities unreachable. That collects taxes and allocates budgets and somehow they are always at the bottom of every list.
They were already surviving a system that forgot them.
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw These children were already carrying so much before May 16 even happened.
Born into a system that underfunds their schools. That sends them to classrooms without chairs, without books, without electricity. That gives them hospitals without drugs and doctors without equipment.
@thatverydarkman@Tunde_OD@NigeriaGov@hrw Their mothers know too.
Their mothers have not slept in 12 days. They are spending Eid not in celebration but on their knees begging God to bring their children back. They packed those school bags. They have not seen their children since.
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