A WARNING TO THE PRESIDENT @officialABAT , GOVERNMENT @NigeriaGov , @nassnigeria @NGRSenate @HouseNGR Governors’ Forum @NGFSecretariat and State Houses of Assembly AND THE NIGERIAN POLITICAL CLASS OF NIGERIA AT LARGE:

DO NOT DARE WISH OUR CHILDREN “HAPPY CHILDREN’S DAY” TODAY .

If you must dare speak on this May 27, then for once, speak the truth of your failures. Stand before Nigerians and confess that you have failed our children. Account for the public budgets that have not guaranteed the Nigerian children safety in their schools nor better education, health, and social protection. Tell us the names and current locations of every single child still in captivity - the Chibok girls, the Kebbi girls, the Niger State children, the Oyo children, and every other.

Tell the parents of these children exactly what your government has done and not done in the days, weeks, months, and years since each abduction.

Publish the audited figures on out-of-school children, on stunting, on learning poverty, on child mortality. Tell us what specific, measurable, time-bound commitments you are making - not in 2030, not in some imaginary future, but this fiscal year - to end the abandonment and to make Nigerian schools safe.

Anything short of that is a desecration of the Children’s Day and constitutes a fresh wound on the badly scared soul of every Nigerian child.

A government that cannot protect its children has forfeited the right to celebrate them. A political class that has built its wealth on the broken backs of the poor has forfeited the right to address their children with affection. There is no moral universe in which the architects of this abandonment may also serve as its celebrants.

To Nigerian children: Some of us see you. The Nigeria you deserve is a country in which you are safe, educated, fed, healed, free to dream and work hard to be the best of any thing you choose to become in this world. We will not stop

to stand with you and for you. The shame of May 27, 2026 belongs not to you, but to those who have governed you into this tragic condition.

Again, to President Tinubu and the rest of his ilk in Nigeria’s political class- who have sworn to a covenant of watching unconcerned that our children are abducted and their teachers killed- be silent on this day.

You have not earned the right to speak to our children today.

Don’t you dare. Period.

Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili

Founder, Human Capital Africa

Founder, FixPolitics and the School of Politics, Policy and Governance- SPPG

Co-founder, Transparency International

Former Federal Minister of Education, Federal Republic of Nigeria

May 27, 2026.

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