If a two-year-old’s kidnapping cannot stop us, what can?

By: Fayth Deleola Daramola

A two-year-old child is reportedly among the victims of the Oyo school kidnapping.

Let that sink in.

Not a politician. Not a billionaire. Not a celebrity.

A toddler.

Yet Nigeria appears to be carrying on as though nothing extraordinary has happened.

Schools are open. Festivals continue. Parties are ongoing. Children’s Day was celebrated. Churches and mosques are filled. Social media is busy with entertainment and politics.

And somewhere, parents are wondering whether their child will come home alive.

Have we become so accustomed to horror that we no longer know when to stop?

History teaches us that nations do not defeat injustice merely through words. They do so when ordinary citizens collectively decide that “business as usual” is no longer acceptable.

When 20 children and six educators were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the United States in 2012, the nation stopped. Flags were lowered. Vigils were held. The tragedy dominated national attention.

When 276 girls were abducted in Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014, the #BringBackOurGirls movement became a global rallying cry. The protests were not violent. They were persistent, visible, and impossible to ignore. The world’s attention was forced onto the issue.

In Argentina, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo marched silently week after week demanding answers about their disappeared children. Their persistence exposed abuses that authorities wanted forgotten.

In South Africa, silent marches and stay-away protests became powerful tools against apartheid. Entire communities deliberately halted normal life to demonstrate that oppression could not be normalized.

In India, after the horrific 2012 Delhi gang rape, nationwide demonstrations forced leaders to respond and enact legal reforms.

The lesson is simple:

Silence can be louder than noise. A pause can be more powerful than a speech. A nation that refuses to carry on normally sends a message that cannot be ignored.

Imagine if every Nigerian agreed that for one day:

No festivals.

No celebrations.

No political rallies.

No unnecessary social events.

Imagine if schools, churches, mosques, traditional rulers, civil society organizations, labor unions, and market associations all wore black.

Imagine if the First Lady appeared in black and called on the nation to stand with the victims.

Imagine if governors stood before their states and declared:

“Until these victims are found, their pain is our pain.”

Imagine if the world woke up to images of millions of Nigerians standing silently in solidarity with kidnapped children.

Would the pressure not intensify? Would the urgency not increase? Would the message not be unmistakable?

The greatest danger to any society is not merely crime. It is the normalization of crime.

Kidnappers should fear the outrage of a nation. Instead, many have come to expect the opposite: a few days of headlines, a few statements from officials, and then life moves on.

Perhaps that is what should anger us most.

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A two-year-old child has been taken.

If that cannot make us stop for a day, what exactly are we waiting for?

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” — commonly attributed to Edmund Burke.

Whether every word of that quote is historically attributable to Burke or not, its message remains painfully relevant today. A society’s response to its most vulnerable victims reveals what it truly values.

•Daramola writes from Indianapolis, USA