The abduction of pupils and teachers from schools in Oyo State has dominated national conversations in recent weeks.
Celebrities have spoken out. Teachers have embarked on industrial action. Protesters have marched through the streets demanding action. Politicians have issued statements. Parents across the country have expressed outrage.
The attention is understandable.
When children are taken from classrooms and teachers are kidnapped while carrying out their duties, silence is not an option.
But amid the nationwide calls for the rescue of the victims in Oyo, another question has quietly emerged:
What happened to the students and teachers abducted in Borno State?
Weeks before the attack in Oyo, suspected insurgents reportedly abducted dozens of students from schools in Mussa community, Askira-Uba Local Government Area of Borno State.
Like the children in Oyo, they were students.
Like the teachers in Oyo, their educators were carrying out their professional responsibilities.
Like the families in Oyo, their parents were left waiting for answers.
Yet their story generated nowhere near the same national attention.
Why?
The Geography of Public Sympathy
The uncomfortable truth is that geography often influences national reactions.
When violence occurs in parts of the country that have suffered prolonged insecurity, many Nigerians have gradually become desensitised to the tragedy.
Attacks in the North-East frequently appear in news reports, but often disappear from public conversations within days.
For communities in Borno, school attacks are not new.
For years, teachers, students, and parents have lived under the shadow of insurgency, displacement, and fear.
The danger is that repeated exposure to tragedy can create public fatigue.
What once shocked the nation gradually becomes treated as routine.
When the Oyo abduction occurred, however, the reaction was different.
The South-West has historically recorded fewer large-scale school kidnappings than some northern regions. The attack therefore felt unusual, alarming, and closer to home for many Nigerians who previously viewed school abductions as distant events.
The result was immediate national outrage.
A Child Is a Child
Education stakeholders argue that this difference in attention reveals a troubling reality.
A child kidnapped in Borno is no less important than a child kidnapped in Oyo.
A teacher abducted in the North-East suffers the same trauma as a teacher abducted in the South-West.
The emotional pain experienced by parents does not depend on geography.
Fear has no region.
Grief has no tribe.
Trauma has no religion.
Yet public responses often suggest otherwise.
The Cost of Selective Attention
When some school attacks receive widespread attention while others are quickly forgotten, dangerous consequences emerge.
Governments may feel greater pressure to act where public scrutiny is strongest.
Media organisations may dedicate more resources to stories that attract public interest.
Communities already battling insecurity may feel abandoned.
Most importantly, families of forgotten victims may begin to believe their suffering matters less.
For education advocates, this is perhaps the greatest danger.
The right to education is universal.
The right to safety should be universal too.
A Threat to Education Everywhere
The issue extends beyond individual abductions.
Every attack on a school sends a message to parents that classrooms are unsafe.
Every kidnapping weakens confidence in the education system.
Every teacher who fears going to work represents another threat to learning outcomes.
Nigeria already struggles with one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children in the world.
School insecurity only deepens the crisis.
Whether the attack occurs in Oyo, Borno, Kaduna, Zamfara, Niger, or any other state, the consequences are ultimately the same: disrupted learning, traumatised communities, and children whose futures are placed at risk.
The Bigger Question
The debate should not be about whether Oyo deserves attention.
It does.
The real question is why equal urgency is not always extended to similar incidents elsewhere.
Why do some school abductions become national emergencies while others fade from public memory?
Why do some victims become household names while others remain statistics?
And what does that say about the value we place on the lives of Nigerian children?
Beyond Headlines
The growing concern over the abducted pupils and teachers in Oyo should serve as a reminder, not a distraction.
It should remind Nigerians that children remain in captivity in other parts of the country.
It should remind policymakers that school safety is a national issue, not a regional one.
And it should remind the nation that every child deserves protection, regardless of where he or she attends school.
Because the measure of a society is not how loudly it speaks when tragedy is visible.
It is how consistently it cares when the cameras are gone.
Until every abducted child is remembered, every kidnapped teacher is accounted for, and every school is safe, Nigeria’s education emergency remains far from over.
