Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has strongly condemned the abduction of schoolchildren and educators in Ogbomoso, Oyo State, as well as the killing of innocent residents in Katsina State, including a pregnant woman, describing the incidents as evidence of deepening insecurity and leadership failure in the country.

In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said the gruesome murder of one of the teachers abducted during the Ogbomoso incident was particularly heartbreaking.
He argued that the continued bloodshed across the country reflected not only a breakdown of security but also a collapse of leadership at the highest level.

“At a time when armed criminals are abducting schoolchildren, slaughtering innocent citizens and turning communities into graveyards, President Tinubu’s response remains the same tired ritual: condemn the killings, threaten that the perpetrators will face the ‘full wrath of the law,’ and then wait for the next massacre,” the statement read.

“Nigerians have heard this script too many times. It has become painfully predictable and utterly meaningless.
“President Tinubu must stop governing by obituary statements.

“Enough of the recycled outrage. Enough of the empty threats. Nigerians are dying, and this government keeps responding with press releases.

“A President who only finds his voice after blood has been spilled is not leading but presiding over failure.”
Atiku further stated that the incidents in Ogbomoso and Katsina were part of a broader national crisis in which criminal groups now operate without fear of consequences.

According to him, “When terrorists can invade schools, abduct children and teachers, butcher pregnant women, sack entire communities and disappear without consequence, it is because the authority of the state has collapsed.”

He questioned the repeated official assurances that perpetrators would face “the full wrath of the law,” asking what comfort such statements offered grieving families and communities devastated by violence.

The former vice president also expressed concern over alleged attempts to suppress images and documentation of violent attacks from reaching the public.

“If this government is indeed more interested in censoring evidence of mass killings than in preventing the killings themselves, then that is not merely incompetence — it is cruelty of the highest order,” he said.

“No serious government hides the blood of its citizens to protect political optics.

“A government that cannot protect the living but seeks to censor evidence of their deaths has lost every moral right to govern.”

Describing the situation as a “moral failure, leadership failure and national disgrace,” Atiku said Nigerians deserved more than “performative outrage and ceremonial condolences.”

He called for the immediate rescue of all abducted victims in Oyo State, decisive security action across vulnerable communities and a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s security architecture.