The children are free; now Nigeria must double down to dismantle the ecosystem of terror

On 10 July 2026, after 56 days in captivity, the remaining pupils and teachers abducted from schools in Ahoro-Esinle, Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State finally regained their freedom. Their ordeal had begun on 15 May, when armed terrorists attacked schools in the community, abducted dozens of pupils and teachers, and later murdered one of the captives, Michael Oyedokun, in an act of unimaginable barbarity. According to the Nigerian Army, the rescue followed more than a month of carefully planned, intelligence-led operations involving the Nigerian Army, the National Counter Terrorism Centre, the Office of the National Security Adviser, the Defence Headquarters, the Nigerian Navy, the Nigerian Air Force, the Nigeria Police Force, the Department of State Services, the National Intelligence Agency, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, together with Amotekun, local hunters and vigilantes. If the official account substantially reflects what transpired, then Nigeria has every reason to welcome and commend a remarkable operational achievement.

Yet the public reaction to the rescue has revealed another challenge confronting our democracy. On one side are those who seize every success as proof that all is well and that criticism should now cease. On the other are those so habituated to distrust that they seem incapable of acknowledging any genuine achievement by public institutions. Neither disposition advances the cause of serious citizenship. A healthy democracy requires something more demanding than either applause or derision. It requires disciplined public intellection: the capacity to recognise success without surrendering scrutiny, and to sustain criticism without becoming incapable of recognising success. Uncritical celebration breeds complacency; permanent cynicism corrodes public reason. Both ultimately impoverish our civic consciousness.

That balance matters for another reason. Behind every successful security operation stand men and women whose names rarely make the headlines except when they return home draped in the national flag. Among them was Lieutenant FA Isaac, who paid the ultimate price in the struggle against terrorism, alongside many other soldiers, intelligence officers and security personnel whose sacrifices may never become matters of public memory. To dismiss every reported success as mere propaganda is not simply to question government; it is also, however unintentionally, to diminish the courage, professionalism and sacrifice of those who daily place themselves between violent predators and the rest of society. They deserve our gratitude. Governments, meanwhile, must continue to earn our confidence through sustained performance rather than occasional success.

What makes the Oyo operation particularly instructive is not only that the children came home, but how they came home. According to the Nigerian Army, the operation concentrated on identifying the kingpins behind the abduction, dismantling their logistics chains, exposing informants, locating hideouts within the Old Oyo National Park, and making arrests both within Oyo State and elsewhere in the country. Rather than relying simply on overwhelming force, the operation appears to have patiently disrupted the wider organisation that sustained the kidnappers until the network itself came under irresistible pressure and the captives were released. If that account proves substantially accurate, then the greatest significance of the operation lies not merely in its success, but in the strategic lesson it offers for the future of Nigeria’s struggle against organised insecurity

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As I reflected on the Army’s statement, I found myself returning to a three-part series I wrote in the Nigerian Tribune on 16, 23 and 30 April 2026, several weeks before the 15th May terrorist attack on the Oriire schools. The significance of those earlier articles is not that they predicted this particular tragedy. They did not. Rather, they sought to understand the underlying logic of organised insecurity before that horror unfolded. The rescue operation now offers an important opportunity to reflect again those ideas against events.

The Army’s account of the operation also resonates with arguments I explored in a three-part Nigerian Tribune series published on 16, 23 and 30 April 2026, before terrorists attacked the Oriire schools on 15 May. The significance of those articles is not that they predicted this particular tragedy. They did not. Rather, they sought to understand the architecture of organised insecurity before this latest outrage unfolded.

In the opening article, published on 16 April 2026, I argued that “the Nigerian terror economy is powered by far more than the men who raid villages, seize travellers, attack farms or drag schoolchildren into forests. Behind the visible violence lies a wider web of enablers and beneficiaries: informants who identify soft targets, arms suppliers who keep the trade in death well stocked, logistics agents who move men and weapons, ransom brokers who convert human misery into revenue, and local collaborators who sustain the machinery of predation through fear, greed or grievance.” The Army’s account appears to reinforce precisely that point. The operation did not merely pursue armed men; it reportedly disrupted parts of the ecosystem that sustained them.

But that should begin the conversation, not end it. The urgent question is how Nigeria can make this approach the rule rather than the exception: how intelligence-led operations can become proactive, dismantling kidnapping networks before the next school, village or travelling family is attacked.

The first step is to widen every investigation beyond the immediate perpetrators. Kidnapping networks depend on financiers, informants, transporters, scouts, arms suppliers, safe-house operators, communications handlers and ransom facilitators. Every one of them is a point of lawful pressure. Security operations should not stop with the gunman. They should expose those who recruited, financed, equipped, sheltered and profited from him.

The second step is to make intelligence cumulative rather than episodic. Too often, an operation ends once victims are rescued or suspects are neutralised. Yet every successful intervention should deepen the national picture of criminal relationships, money flows, recruitment channels, hideouts and logistical patterns. The aim is not merely to solve today’s case, but to make tomorrow’s crime progressively harder to organise.

The law must then be applied across the full ecosystem. In my column of 23 April, I argued that “the law should tie the hands of the violent and strengthen the hands of the lawful.” Counter-terrorism requires exactly that discipline. Terrorism-financing laws, conspiracy offences, financial intelligence, asset forfeiture, lawful electronic surveillance and prosecution for material support should be used relentlessly against those who sustain violent enterprises. The objective is to make participation in the terror economy more dangerous, more expensive and harder to conceal.

 That pressure must extend far beyond the forest. Those who supply food, fuel, medicine, vehicles, weapons or communications equipment; those who launder ransom proceeds, provide accommodation, scout vulnerable communities or pass information to kidnappers—all must understand that they are exposed to investigation and prosecution. Terrorist organisations distribute responsibility across many hands. The state must distribute lawful pressure across the same network.

Communities remain indispensable to this effort. In the concluding article of 30 April, I wrote that community security depends on “local intelligence, surveillance, liaison, trust and rapid communication.” The Army’s account that local vigilantes, hunters and Amotekun operatives participated alongside the military and intelligence agencies illustrates why organised communities remain indispensable. Intelligence often begins when ordinary people notice unfamiliar movements, repeated reconnaissance, suspicious transactions, hidden camps or patterns that do not fit. Organised communities are the first sensors in a larger national intelligence system.

The lesson of Oyo, therefore, is not simply that security agencies can rescue victims after tragedy. It is that Nigeria can identify, penetrate and disrupt the networks that make tragedy possible. Success should no longer be measured only by the number of terrorists arrested after an attack, but by the number of attacks that never happen because their financiers, informants, logistics and safe havens have already been dismantled. The objective must be to make organised terror harder to finance, harder to conceal, harder to sustain and, ultimately, harder to attempt.

Michael Oyedokun did not live to witness the homecoming of the children with whom he shared captivity. That remains one of the deepest sorrows of this tragedy. The most fitting tribute to his memory, however, is not merely to remember his death, but to learn from it. The ecosystem of terror was built over many years. It will not disappear overnight. But the rescue of the Oriire schoolchildren reminds us that organised systems of violence can, in turn, be met by organised systems of law, intelligence, community and state. That, more than anything else, should now become the organising philosophy of Nigeria’s security strategy.