More than 40 pupils and teachers were abducted from schools in Oriire Local Government Area, Oyo State, on 15 May 2026, the first such school kidnapping in southern Nigeria, researcher Saheed Babajide Owonikoko said.
Writing for The Conversation, Owonikoko attributed the attack to Ansaru, formally known as The Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa, and said the group’s demands confirmed its involvement.
The group sought 1 billion naira paid into an account in the Benin Republic, the release of its members from prison, Toyota Hilux vehicles, and concessions on some Oyo State laws favouring bandits, including land and sharia law.
What can Nigeria learn from the mass kidnap of school children in Oyo State?
Owonikoko said the second demand is particularly informative. In August 2025, Nigeria’s national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, announced the arrest of two key Ansaru leaders: Mahmud Muhammad Usman, the amir, and Mahmud al-Nigeri, the deputy and chief of staff.
Both are standing trial on terrorism charges.
The researcher said Ansaru had remained silent for a long time due to the leadership vacuum left by those arrests, and that the group’s strategic importance made it stage the Oyo kidnapping.
In a previous article, Owonikoko warned that given the importance of the two leaders, the group might attempt to secure their release through a prison break or resort to a high-profile kidnapping or hostage-taking operation, either in retaliation for their detention or as leverage to demand their release.
According to Owonikoko, the choice of Oyo State and the targeting of pupils were also strategic.
He said Oyo State is vulnerable because of its proximity to the North Central and North East through savannah woodlands, wildlife reserves and riparian vegetation.
Movement from the North Central and North West to the south may also be driven by low security expectations and reduced military pressure in those areas, he wrote.
The researcher added that a reduction in expertise following the arrests of Usman and al-Nigeri affected Ansaru’s operational effectiveness in high-intensity security terrain, making the south more attractive.
Ansaru usually targets high-value civilians, including expatriates, well-to-do individuals and humanitarian workers, he said, but kidnapped schoolchildren because of their vulnerability and because such attacks can spark public outrage that may force the government to give concessions.
What factors motivated this kidnap?
Owonikoko drew four lessons from the incident by comparing it with previous kidnappings in Nigeria. The first is that northern Nigeria had previously been the centre of kidnapping incidents.
As of 1 June 2026, there had been 31 mass school kidnapping incidents involving over 2,530 people in Nigeria since the 2014 Chibok abductions, he wrote.
Terrorists had struck before in south-western Nigeria, and criminal kidnappings on highways had taken place, but not a mass school kidnapping.
The Oyo State case is the first in the southern parts of Nigeria, he said, and the lesson is that terrorism is expanding beyond the traditional areas known for the activities of terrorist groups.
The second difference Owonikoko identified is that the victims included children as young as two years old, whereas most previous Nigerian mass school abductions targeted older students.
The third is that multiple schools were involved; his contact in Ogbomosho said three schools were attacked.
He said this suggests the vulnerability of civilian populations and institutions in areas previously regarded as less exposed to terrorist kidnapping.
The targeting of particular groups, especially schoolchildren and other populations whose abduction is likely to generate public pressure, also provides terrorists with a strategic advantage, he wrote.
Such attacks are easy for the group to execute and can trigger public outrage, protests and demands for government action, potentially pressuring authorities to negotiate or make concessions.
Victims have now been released or rescued, most probably without concession to any of the group’s demands, Owonikoko wrote, and some people linked to the incidents have been put on trial.
But the ease with which the group carried out the attack exposes the vulnerability of the south-west and other non-traditional theatres of terrorist kidnapping to sudden attacks, particularly where security presence and response capacity remain limited, he said.
Concentrating security in volatile areas may not be the solution, he added, as terrorist groups will always take advantage of vulnerable areas.
What makes the south-west vulnerable to these kinds of attacks?
Owonikoko noted that criminal bandits and terrorists are responsible for most high-profile kidnapping incidents in Nigeria, but while bandits kidnap mostly for money, terrorists mostly kidnap for more strategic reasons.
Since its breakaway from Boko Haram in 2013, Ansaru has acquired a reputation for high-profile kidnapping and hostage-taking, sometimes with the support of bandits, he wrote.
On the government’s response, Owonikoko said that according to the official account, the rescue of the schoolchildren and their teachers was achieved through a prolonged, intelligence-led, multi-agency operation.
Although the outcome shows state security institutions can mount a coordinated response, he wrote, it raises questions about whether such resource-intensive operations can be sustained and replicated in similar incidents.
More fundamentally, Owonikoko said the operation illustrates the reactive character of the response: security agencies mobilised resources after the abduction rather than preventing the attack or detecting the threat earlier.
This is where the debate over state police is important, he wrote.
One of the major problems with Nigeria’s security landscape, in his assessment, is the centralisation of the security apparatus, leaving the federating units at the mercy of the federal government to deploy security forces.
To reduce the vulnerability of civilians everywhere in Nigeria, he argued, the police institution should be federalised, which would ensure that a minimum level of protection exists for everyone, wherever they live in Nigeria.
Does this incident have any implications for the ongoing debate on state policing in Nigeria?
Source: The Conversation
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