No One Is Truly Safe: The Kidnapped Children of Ogbomoso and a Nation Living on Borrowed Security.

When news broke that dozens of schoolchildren had been abducted in Ogbomoso, Oyo State, many Nigerians reacted with the now familiar cocktail of horror, outrage and exhaustion.

Horror because children were involved.

Outrage because this should never happen.

Exhaustion because it has happened before.

And it will probably happen again. That last sentence is perhaps the most heartbreaking part of all.

I grew up in communities that looked very much like the one these children came from. We were poor by many standards, but we did not live in fear. Nigeria had its problems then. Governance was far from perfect, infrastructure was lacking, and opportunities were scarce. But I cannot remember lying awake at night worried that armed men would storm my school or snatch me from my home.

I remember sleeping in houses without proper doors or windows. I remember long walks to school, playing outside until dusk, and parents who worried about scraped knees and bad company, not kidnappers and ransom demands.

Yes, there were thieves. There were armed robbers. Crime existed. But poor families like mine rarely saw ourselves as targets, and criminals rarely saw value in targeting us.

Today, Nigeria feels like an entirely different country. The landscape may look familiar, but the sense of security that once existed has quietly disappeared.

For years now, tragedy in Nigeria no longer arrives as a surprise. It arrives as a recurring guest.We know its face.We know its voice. We know the script. A mass abduction occurs.

The government condemns it. Officials describe the incident with heavy-hitting vocabulary. "Barbaric." "Unfortunate." "Condemnable." "Senseless." Security agencies promise investigations. Statements are released. Assurances are made. Committees are formed.

Then another tragedy happens.

And another. And another.

Meanwhile, ordinary Nigerians are left to navigate a country where safety increasingly feels like a luxury rather than a right.

The children taken in Ogbomoso are not statistics.

They are sons and daughters.

They are classmates and neighbours.

They are children who woke up expecting to return home after school. Their parents packed lunches, adjusted uniforms and waved goodbye, unaware that a routine school day would become every family's worst nightmare.

Perhaps what makes incidents like this particularly chilling is that they force us to confront an uncomfortable reality:

No one is truly safe.

For years, many Nigerians comforted themselves with geography. Kidnappings were a northern problem. Insurgency was a northeastern problem.

Banditry belonged elsewhere.

But insecurity has a habit of spreading beyond the borders we imagine for it.

The Ogbomoso abduction reminds us that violence does not respect state lines, political affiliations, religion or social class.

It simply expands.

And while citizens continue to adapt their lives around insecurity, the response often feels reactive rather than preventative.

Parents change routes.

Families avoid travelling at night.

Schools build fences.

Communities hire vigilantes.

Individuals become their own security strategy.

The burden of survival has gradually shifted from institutions to citizens. That should alarm us all. Because the true measure of a functioning society is not how well people protect themselves. It is how effectively the state protects them.

The tragedy of modern Nigeria is that many citizens have stopped expecting protection altogether. We have become accustomed to living with risk.

We leave home and send a text saying, "I've arrived safely."b We share live locations.

We avoid certain roads. We mentally calculate escape routes in public spaces. We pray before journeys that should require nothing more than fuel and directions. These habits have become normal.

They should not be. The kidnapped children of Ogbomoso deserve more than our sympathy.

They deserve a country willing to move beyond statements and into solutions. Their parents deserve more than promises.

They deserve answers. And Nigerians deserve more than carefully crafted press releases whenever tragedy strikes.

They deserve to feel safe. Because a nation cannot truly prosper when its citizens are constantly looking over their shoulders.

Until meaningful solutions replace familiar rhetoric, every new abduction serves as a reminder of a painful truth:

In a country where insecurity has become routine, no one is ever as safe as they think they are.

And perhaps the saddest part of all is that an entire generation of Nigerian children is growing up believing this level of fear is normal.

It isn't.

And it never should be.