‘No Social Amenities Here’ — Oyo school Attack Survivors Blame Poor Internet Access for Delayed Help

The date on the chalkboard of primary 5, L.A Primary School at the Ahoro-Esinele community in Oriire LGA, Oyo state, reads 15/5/2026. The pupils were learning about communication and its types. Other sections of the board had lessons on mathematics and Yoruba. In another section, “What is Democracy?” is boldly scribbled. At the far right, the national anthem trails downward in fading chalk:

“Nigeria, we hail thee

Our own dear native land…”

It had been five days since their abduction by gunmen, but the date on the blackboard remains the same, as do the lessons — time seemingly frozen as evidence of the tragedy that befell the children on that ill-fated day.

On May 15, armed men riding on motorcycles invaded Yawota and Esinele communities and abducted students, pupils, and teachers from L.A. Primary School, Community High School, and Baptist Church Primary School.

At least 46 members of the community were abducted, including schoolchildren as young as two years old.

Outside one of the homes in the community, Iya Kausarah stood over a cooking fire the morning it happened. She was preparing breakfast when she saw men in military uniforms pass by — ordinary in appearance, unremarkable in that first moment, and yet carrying a violence she could not yet read.

Her children had left for school barely an hour earlier, on empty stomachs. The last meal they had was dinner from the previous day.

She had been cooking for their return, a breakfast that neither her 2-year-old daughter nor her older sister would eat from.

She said it was luck that the older child escaped, but the youngest was picked up by the gunmen from Baptist Church Primary School.

“I’m a visitor here. I came here from Cotonou to look for what to eat. Her father is dead. I came to this town to hustle. I’m her mother and father,” Iya Kausarah said.

WE’D HAVE CALLED FOR HELP IF WE HAD NETWORK ACCESS

The affected communities in Oriire LGA are 42 km away from Ogbomosho city. The roads are a long stretch, with little communities perched intermittently along the routes.

The journey took about two hours from the palace of the Soun of Ogbomosho. First comes Esinele, then Yawota, barely two kilometres away. Both communities are enveloped by the forest reserve.

Damilare Amusa, a resident in Yawota, told TheCable that they have never had basic social amenities, stressing the lack of government presence.

He noted that the lack of internet connectivity in the community prevented them from notifying security operatives or informing neighbouring communities to come to their rescue while the attack was ongoing.

“No light, no internet. The government should help us. If we had a network, we would have been able to call for help,” Amusa said.

The residents said when sporadic gunshots rent the air, they all ran away and took cover. From their hiding, they watched helplessly as the gunmen whisked their children away.

“They paraded the children like cows when they were leaving; we were peeping from our windows when they were going but too scared to do anything. They passed right here,” he said, pointing to the road at the front of their homes.

Adigun Michael, another resident, also buttressed the lack of social amenities in the community.

“No social amenities here. We need a mast to communicate. Look at my phone; no service. We don’t have a hospital; we’d have to go to Esinele or Aworo Oko to use their primary healthcare centre,” he said.

“There is no light, no water, no network, no electricity, nothing! Just the primary school.”

And now the primary school, a private educational institution built by the church, has its doors shut, with a future of uncertainty.

Michael further told TheCable that while no abduction had been recorded before, some armed men had, in two previous instances, killed residents in the community — the latest happening about 15 days before the school attacks.

“They first came here on Easter Monday; they killed someone. After that, they came back 15 days before this incident, chased a man here, and killed him,” he said.

“The government has been hearing about this, but even if we want to report, there is no network. See my phone; no network. We have to go far away to get a network connection.”

A COMMUNITY TORN APART BY TRAGEDY

By the time TheCable arrived in Oriire, silence had settled over the communities like dust. Most of the houses stood deserted, doors were bolted, and compounds were empty.

Many residents had fled after the attack, abandoning the homes they had lived in for years in fear that the gunmen could return.

Michael said more than 2,500 people lived in the community before the abduction.

“This is all of us that are left. We’re not up to 50,” he said, gesturing towards the few residents gathered nearby.

“We’re only waiting for our families to come back. We are in anxiety. There is no peace of mind.

“Those of us still here are panicking because what we hear is that the more pressure they face, the more they kill our children.”

For the mother of Testimony, one of the abducted children, Yawota was once a refuge. She migrated from the Benin Republic and has lived in the community since 2002, working as a labourer. Over the years, it became home, a sanctuary and a source of livelihood. Now, she remains there for only one reason: to wait for her daughter.

“I was chubby before. See me now,” she said.

“Those children are too young. Government should help us bring them back.”

When asked to describe Testimony, she paused.

“She takes tea and bread in the morning,” she finally said, falling silent again. She stared blankly ahead as though searching through memories she no longer had the strength to hold.

“I’m tired. My mind is blank,” she whispered.

Among those gathered was an elderly woman whose one of her twin grandchildren had also been abducted.

“My grandchildren are twins. They took Taiye. He is just 14 years old,” the grandmother said.

She said she was the only member of her family left in the community.

“I cannot leave because of Taiye. Their mother is my only child,” she said.

‘WE CAN’T BURY OUR DEAD’

A day after the attack, a joint team of security operatives, including soldiers, police officers, members of the Amotekun corps, and local hunters, launched a rescue mission into the forest.

But the gunmen had planted improvised explosive devices along the route, killing some members of the team and leaving several others injured.

Michael said his 27-year-old younger brother, Shaibu, was among those killed.

“They bombed him, and he died,” he said.

He said Shaibu was a forest guard reserve who left behind two wives and four children.

Days later, the family had still not recovered his body from the forest.

Ameo Emmanuel, one of the local vigilantes who joined the pursuit, said he was attending a ceremony to install him as the “Balode” — head of hunters — in Esinele when gunshots rang out.

“I ran there immediately, but I was outnumbered,” Emmanuel said.

“I started calling other hunters. They came with two motorcycles and carried others along. We were three on each bike.”

The scar on his face, he said, came from falling into a gutter during the chase.

“Before we got there, they had already burnt the principal’s car and entered the forest,” he said.

According to Emmanuel, three hunters were killed within the first 48 hours after the attack, while several others sustained injuries.

Their bodies, too, have not been recovered.

‘MY MUM IS COMING TOMORROW’

Before she was abducted, Jelilat Oluwakemi Oladeji often recorded videos on her way to Community High School, Esinele. She was passionate about her profession, and she called herself a “village teacher”.

“One of the beautiful experiences is joining the students on the school farm. These ones are used to climbing trees. I was begging them to come down from the tree,” Jelilat wrote in one of her social media posts documenting her life as a teacher.

Three times every week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday — she travelled from Ogbomosho on commercial motorcycles to teach biology and chemistry in the remote community.

Her husband, Oladeji Olatunji, said the journey became even harder after she returned from maternity leave following a caesarean section.

“Whenever she came back, she complained of body pains because of the hours spent on the bike,” he said.

Jelilat knew that the road she travelled was unsafe and, in some instances, had mentioned to her husband that she mostly saw herders and cattle on the deserted route.

“Na only God dey always protect us on this lonely road,” she captioned in pidgin English a video she shot while commuting on a bike to work.

Jelilat made the post barely a week before her concerns became manifest; only it did not meet her on the road, but at a location supposed to be a safe place.

A day after the attack, Oladeji drove to the community himself for the first time.

“I was crying inside the car,” he said.

“I kept asking myself, ‘So this is the place my wife has been travelling to?’”

At home, their daughter still does not know what happened.

“We lied to her that her mum travelled. Every day, she keeps saying, ‘My mum is coming tomorrow.’”

Since the abduction, Oladeji said no government official has reached out to the family.

“We only hear things on the news. They don’t even know me,” he said.

“I want to beg the government, when things like this happen, they should contact the family members. Going to that place is strenuous enough.

“Reach out to families to know how they are doing, not that they will be left alone to manage the situation.”

ORIIRE SCHOOL ATTACK AN ‘UNFORTUNATE OUTCOME OF MISSED INTELLIGENCE’ 

Taiwo Adebayo, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), said the attack signals a dangerous expansion of Nigeria’s insecurity corridor into the south-west.

He described the incident as the first mass school abduction in the region, warning that armed groups are increasingly exploiting poorly governed forest routes linking north-western and north-central states such as Kwara and Niger to south-western communities.

Adebayo, who is also the president of the Oyo Global Forum (OGF), said the growing vulnerability of settlements around the Kainji National Park forest corridor has become a major security concern.

The vast forest belt, he explained, connects to the Borgu-Kainji axis through expansive and difficult-to-monitor routes that armed groups have increasingly used for movement and concealment.

While some observers have linked the abduction to the January killing of forest guards in the area, Adebayo said preliminary findings suggest different actors likely carried out both incidents.

He said the earlier attack appeared to have been carried out by mercenaries allegedly hired by illegal miners seeking the release of arrested associates.

Adebayo explained that the recent school abduction, however, appeared more coordinated and bore the characteristics of an organised armed group.

He said there were growing concerns that extremist factions linked to Boko Haram or splinter groups such as Mahmuda and Sadiku may already be operating close to the Kainji forest region.

He also criticised what he described as a reactive security approach around the forest corridor. According to him, reports of armed groups using the national park as hideouts and sanctuaries had circulated for years.

“Unfortunately, those reports that could have served as a fit for intelligence were not considered. If they were considered at all, the response was poor and not persistent,” Adebayo said.

“For long, armed criminals have been in and around the forest, conducting surveillance, gathering intelligence and assessing vulnerabilities before eventually striking,” he said, describing the abduction as “an unfortunate outcome of missed intelligence and a reactive security posture.”

UNICEF ASKS FG, OYO TO TREAT OGBOMOSHO SCHOOL ABDUCTION AS ‘CATEGORY 1 EDUCATION EMERGENCY’

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) described the Ogbomosho abduction as a significant shift in the pattern of attacks on schools in Nigeria, warning that the incident showed that “no region of Nigeria can any longer consider itself categorically outside the reach of school-targeted armed violence.”

Speaking to TheCable, Vanessa Lee, chief education officer, UNICEF Nigeria, said the attack threatened not only the safety of the abducted children and teachers, but also the right to education of thousands of pupils across affected communities.

“Fear may lead to school closures, absenteeism, withdrawal of girls and younger children, and increased psychosocial distress among learners, caregivers and teachers,” the agency told TheCable.

Drawing from previous school abductions in places such as Chibok, Dapchi and Kankara, UNICEF warned that attacks on schools often trigger sharp declines in enrolment and attendance, especially among girls, while increasing risks of child labour, early marriage and long-term school dropout.

For the wider south-west region, UNICEF warned that the implications are systemic, noting that if the Oriire attack is followed by “even a single replication event” — as has historically occurred after initial mass abductions in other parts of Nigeria — the region could see a rapid shift in how families perceive the safety of schooling.

“Families across the region will begin to calculate whether schooling is worth the risk,” Lee noted.

“The response must go beyond security operations,” Mona Aika, child protection manager, UNICEF Nigeria, added.

Aika called for psychosocial support, family liaison services, child protection interventions and measures to restore confidence in schools as safe learning spaces.

The organisation further highlighted gaps in school safety planning in rural communities, noting that many schools lacked functioning emergency response plans, early warning systems and trained protection committees.

“From an education governance perspective, this incident exposes a pre-existing gap: state-level Safe Schools frameworks in the South-West were not designed for an armed abduction scenario,” the organisation said.

UNICEF further said the lack of basic social amenities in the communities meant that “the communication infrastructure for a functioning early warning system does not currently exist. This is a hardware gap as much as a capacity gap”.

“…closing that gap urgently is both a rights obligation and a deterrence investment.

UNICEF said evidence-based models such as remote learning, community-based education, and accelerated learning programs could help sustain education in conflict-affected communities.

The agency identified hybrid radio-based learning as the most practical immediate option for Oriire and nearby communities, noting that the Nigeria Learning Passport radio lessons had previously been used during the Kuriga abduction response in Kaduna state.

It also recommended safe learning spaces and catch-up learning programmes to help affected children continue learning and gradually transition back into formal classrooms after the crisis.

A QUESTION LEFT HANGING 

Above Oriire, the bright blue sky hangs brightly over a people too grief-stricken to admire its beauty.

Military trucks now move through the once-quiet communities. Soldiers occupy the compound of Community High School, now turned into a makeshift base since the attack. On Tuesday, a police helicopter hovered over Esinele before touching down briefly within the school grounds, kicking up dust as residents watched in silence.

Authorities say both kinetic and non-kinetic operations are underway to secure the release of the abducted victims. But in Esinele, traditional leaders have turned elsewhere for answers, invoking the gods of the land and calling for justice beyond human reach.

Still, uncertainty remains. No one is speaking to Oladeji, and in Yawota, every unfamiliar vehicle entering the community draws women and family members to the roadside, hoping someone has arrived with information — an update, hope, or good news that their children are home.

Back inside L.A. Primary School, a question remains unanswered.

“What is democracy?”

In this place, the answer does not sit on a board. It sits in absence — in the silence of classrooms emptied by fear, in the absence of children who should be learning, and in the uncertainty of parents who no longer feel the safety and security that democracy is meant to guarantee.