Former Anambra State governor Peter Obi has accused Nigeria’s political class of fixating on the 2027 election while abducted schoolchildren remain in captivity and attacks spread across the country.
In a statement on Tuesday, Obi said leaders were paying more attention to political ambition than to citizens’ safety. “We politicians remain consumed by the next election,” he wrote, pointing to a run of kidnappings and killings.
Two weeks after gunmen seized pupils in Borno and Oyo states, the children are still held. Suspected Boko Haram fighters took between 48 and 51 pupils from Mussa community in Askira Uba on 15 May, while attackers abducted 46 people, among them 39 students, seven teachers and a principal, from three schools near Ogbomoso in Oyo.
Obi said the government was publicising the formation of a rescue team of about a thousand members while the captives stayed in the bush. Announcing rescue squads, he argued, was no substitute for freeing the children.
He pointed to a string of recent attacks as proof of worsening insecurity. Terrorists killed at least seven people and wounded 10 in Gwon Ajang village in Plateau State on Sunday. In Kogi State, raiders abducted more than 25 residents and killed one at Ayegunle Igun, while gunmen killed two police officers in Anambra.
Obi called the repeated assaults on schools and communities a grave national emergency, saying such bloodshed should not occur in a country that is not at war.
