Prioritising safety for the girl child is not optional; it is urgent. There is an escalating danger faced by the girl child in Nigeria that calls for immediate national accountability and protection for girls seeking education.
With the recent kidnapping of 25 schoolgirls in Kebbi, Nigeria, it is devastating to admit that in this country, the girl child continues to live at the intersection of fear, neglect and violence. She is unsafe on the road, unsafe in her community and heartbreakingly unsafe in the one place that should guarantee her a future: school. Each new attack on a girls’ school is a reminder that the systems meant to protect children are failing in ways that are both predictable and preventable.
On November 17, 2025, that failure became painfully visible again. In the quiet hours before dawn, armed men stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State. They scaled the fence with ease and opened fire. In the chaos, 25 schoolgirls were kidnapped. Their vice principal, Hassan Yakubu Makuku, was tragically killed while trying to defend them. A security guard was also shot. However, two students escaped, but the kidnappers marched the rest into darkness.
Meanwhile, soldiers heading to rescue the kidnapped girls were ambushed by terrorists. Although officials continue to offer condolences and assurances, these gestures do not erase the fact that an entire school of girls was left vulnerable in an environment where similar attacks have happened repeatedly. The girl child is being asked to survive circumstances that no child should have to imagine.
When we look back, the warning signs have never disappeared
None of this is new. Nigeria has lived through this cycle for more than a decade. In 2021, bandits abducted more than one hundred students from Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna. They were released in batches over several weeks, and some did not find their way home for years. In the same year, Greenfield University was attacked, and students were murdered in captivity. Entire families bore the kind of grief that never heals.
These events are not isolated. They belong to the same devastating lineage that began with one of the darkest moments in our history. In April 2014, the Chibok girls were forcefully taken from their school in Borno State. The world promised never to forget. Politicians vowed reform. Yet eleven years later, armed groups still target classrooms, and communities panic at nightfall. Parents cling to prayer as their only defence against violence and helplessness.
The abduction of the Chibok girls was supposed to be the national turning point. Instead, it became a terrible template of unchecked violence that others have continued to follow.
Why the girl child continues to bear the heaviest burden
There is a painful truth that Nigerians must confront. These attacks expose a deeper form of gendered vulnerability. When schools are attacked, it is often the girl child who suffers the most. She is already navigating cultural, social and economic barriers that try to push her out of education. Now she must also confront the possibility of being abducted or killed for daring to learn.
The girl child must fight to receive an education. She must fight not to be assaulted, he must fight to be believed when she reports a crime. She must fight for dignity, for safety and for her own voice. And when she raises that voice, she is often threatened, dismissed or punished.
There is nothing accidental about the targeting of girls. Education is power. And kidnapping girls from their classrooms is an attack on the opportunity that allows them to rise.
Read also: 7.6 million Nigerian girls are out of school: An overlooked crisis that demands urgent action
Every time a girl child is kidnapped, Nigeria loses far more than one life. We lose imagination, brilliance, potential innovators, educators and leaders. When a child is kidnapped in this country, we lose a piece of the future while violence and anger prevail. When parents withdraw their daughters from school out of fear, entire communities lose future generations of women who could have transformed society.
We cannot approach these attacks as isolated crises. They are evidence of a system that has not been modernised, rural schools that lack protection, and political responses that come too late and end too quickly. Nigeria needs serious investment in early warning systems, community protection strategies, modern intelligence gathering, and infrastructure that makes schools secure day and night. More importantly, we need leadership that treats the safety of the girl child as a national priority rather than an afterthought.
We cannot allow the girl child to become another headline
The girl child is a human being with a name and a future. She is not a statistic or a number in a security report. The girl child deserves to walk into her classroom without fear. She deserves a government that protects her dreams and a society that values her life.
If we continue to remain silent, we risk further normalising the current reality where girls disappear and the nation simply moves on. That kind of silence is complicity, and our continued indifference is deadly. These brutal headlines have become synonymous with news coming out of Nigeria; at this point, are we even truly surprised?
Nigeria must choose a different future. We owe it to every girl who has vanished, every parent who is still waiting and every child who wants to learn without fear. Protecting the girl child is not charity. It is the foundation of any country that hopes to survive. Until we place their safety at the centre of our national priorities, we are failing girls and women across the globe, and we are failing ourselves and our potential future.
Read more: Neutrality in the face of injustice is complicity; here’s why choosing a side matters
