My essay starts with a very simple question: Why did Nigerian government celebrate Children’s Day when our nursery and kindergarten kids have been in Fulani kidnappers’ captivity for two weeks?
It’s unthinkable that a government of “renewed hope” should even contemplate celebrating Children’s Day when our children are facing imminent death from Fulani kidnappers. A day when one of their teachers was beheaded like a cow by Fulani terrorists. Children’s Day is celebrated to honor youths, promote child welfare, and advocate for fundamental rights.
Nigeria’s celebration of Children’s Day is an example of how not to celebrate Children’s Day. The truth is brutally simple: Dozens of our children are in captivity with no hope of being rescued safe and sound.
Our children attend school without breakfast. They go to school in threadbare uniforms. They’re taught in a dilapidated classroom. They’re seated on bare dusty floor in the classroom.
Some of their schools have no teachers, no windows, no toilets, no libraries. Some learn under the Baobab tree. They’re exploited through child labor. Through sex trafficking, our children are maximally exploited.
The rich and the powerful in Nigeria exploit our children as domestic slaves. They build their wealth on the backs of our children. Their companies rely and profit heavily from underpaid or unpaid child labor.
Therefore, it makes no sense for the government to celebrate Children’s Day. It is no celebration. It is an indictment of the moral bankruptcy of those in charge of the country.
It is a footnote on how much our children worth in the hands of the native tyrants running the country.
Children’s Day shouldn’t be a day of meaningless flowery political speeches. Not a day for campaigning or cajoling.
Rather, it should be a day of accountability for the leaders to account for their leadership failures and other crimes against humanity.
It should be a day to put the leaders on trial for abduction, kidnapping, torture, neglect, and first degree murder of our children in captivity.
How can we celebrate Children’s Day when the celebrants are in captivity for over two weeks and still counting in the custody of blood thirsty savagery Fulani terrorists?
How do we celebrate children in school uniforms glued to their bodies for 15 days without changing clothes, without brushing their teeth, without bathing, and without regular meals?
What reason or reasons to celebrate children paralyzed by torture and lying dead on bare bush floor? What celebration for children who are in geographical isolation from their parents and loved ones?
The more we think of the insensitive, wickedness, and callousness of our leaders, the stranger it gets. The celebration of Children’s Day by the government is a celebration of political drama and silence of complicity.
It’s a celebration of life abandoned in the bush. It’s a celebration of children dying away slowly and quietly. It’s a celebration of legitimizing kidnapping, torture, and violence against our children.
There’s no romantic rumors here. No human being should experience what our children are going through in captivity.
No country in the world would allow such heinous crime for 24 hours without taking appropriate action to bring home the children.
Only in a dysfunctional country like Nigeria ruled by sadists and evil people. This is so dark to forget.
What kind of Children’s Day do we as a country celebrate at a time when our children’s future has been ruptured, captured, and stolen by both the so-called leaders and kidnappers?
At a time when millions of school age children are languishing in our jails for petty crimes of stealing cocoyam, three pieces of plantain, and snacks to hold their stomachs together.
What kind of Children’s Day do we celebrate when our children are not free to attend schools of their choice with freedom and liberty to explore their youthful/childhood exuberance?
On Children’s Day, I struggled to come up with the right words to express my feelings and thoughts. I cried in silent sobs at the video of our children in captivity.
I marvel at the type of government we have. I cried of the horrible uncertainty, the fear of tomorrow, and the agony of wasted lives awaiting our children caused by epidemic of manufactured evils by evil leaders.
The fear of death is an eternal companion in these evil times in Nigeria where terrorists and government are in partnership in killing our children.
Children’s Day celebration in Nigeria is not a celebration but a national day of mourning.
#Bring our children home – now!
Bayo Oluwasanmi; bjoluwasanmi@gmail.com
