When a Nation’s Children Bleed, the Fathers Must Rise

In the last two weeks alone, close to 100 children have been kidnapped across Kaduna, Kebbi, and Niger States. This morning, we learned that 51 have been rescued, but over 40 remain unaccounted for.

Last week, I published a detailed analysis on unsafe schools in Northern Nigeria, history, patterns, failures, and strategies.

But today, I write not as an analyst.I write as a father, 55 years old, raising my first 4-year-old child.

And from that place, I feel the pain of Nigerian parents whose children are carted away like cargo while simply trying to get an education in the 21st century. These are not the privileged or the powerful. These are the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the hoi polloi, whose dreams are already fragile, now being violently erased.

This week, I asked myself a painful but honest question:

If my son attended such a school, what choice would I have?
His right to life, or his right to education?

And that question took me to a truth we do not say enough:

All rights are equal, but some rights are prerequisites for others.

The dead cannot learn.
The dead cannot develop.
The dead cannot participate.
The dead cannot be protected.

The right to life is the foundation upon which all other rights stand.

So today, my reflection is simple but weighty:

A nation that cannot protect its children in school is a nation bleeding from the soul.
And when we say “Nigeria bleeds,” we must understand that we are the ones bleeding, because we are Nigeria.

Nelson Mandela said, “There is no keener revelation of a nation’s soul than the way it treats its children.” By that standard, what does our soul look like today?

Abraham Lincoln reminds us that “the state of humanity is in the hands of the child.”

But what hands hold the Nigerian child today?
Hands of safety, or hands of danger?

Years ago, I wrote an article titled:
“When a Nation Sheds the Blood of Its Own Future.”

Today, it feels worse.

We are no longer shedding the blood of our future;
we are shedding the blood of our present.

The pivotal link between today and tomorrow is being severed.

You cannot destroy the present and expect the future to stand.

Right now, our nation has only two possible destinies:
Resurrection or Burial. There is no middle ground.

If we look only at the pain of our bleeding, and at the consequences of rising, we will lie down, do nothing, and bleed to death. But if we look at the joy set before us, the glorious destiny of our precious children whose childhood can be preserved, we will despise the pain of bleeding and the shame of consequences.

Because the stakes are too high to retreat into fear.

If we fail to choose either path, we stand exactly where the four lepers stood in scripture. They looked at their reality and decided to move, not out of heroism, but out of enlightened self-interest, and they ended up saving an entire nation.

Our silence will determine which destiny becomes our reality.

Pastor Niemöller warned during the rise of Hitler:
“They came for others, and I said nothing…
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak.”

Today, they are coming for Nigerian children.

If we do not speak now, tomorrow may be too late.

And in the words of Martin Luther King Jr.,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

MY CALL TO ACTION (Clear, Strategic, Non-Negotiable)

1. Lend Your Voice: Publicly and Courageously

Quiet outrage changes nothing.
Use your platform. Use your influence. Use your voice.

2. Demand Enforcement of Safe School Policies

Policies exist. Enforcement does not.
Regulatory bodies must be compelled, legally, morally, sociallyto act.

3. Write to Your Representatives in the National Assembly

Demand accountability.
Demand state and federal intervention.
Demand action, not condolence statements.

4. Refuse to “Look Away”

The ostrich posture is no longer viable.
When the children of a nation are unsafe, everyone is unsafe.

5. Stand With Families Who Are Bleeding

Our compassion is power.
Our solidarity is strength.
Our silence is complicity.

FINAL WORD FROM A 55-YEAR-OLD FATHER

I hold my son’s hand every morning.
I imagine the terror of parents whose children did not return home.
And my heart bleeds.

But grief must become movement.
Pain must become purpose.
Anger must become advocacy.

Nigeria is bleeding.

But if we rise, purposefully, intentionally, urgently, collectively, Nigeria can resurrect.

And that resurrection begins with one sacred assignment:
Protecting the Nigerian child.