A Design Problem Reflection on Children’s Day
Yesterday, May 27 was Children’s Day in Nigeria, ordinarily, it should be a day of celebration but I couldn’t even bring myself to put up any designed poster to celebrate Nigerian Children and Children all over the world because, injustice to one is injustice to all. The kidnapped Children aren’t less important than any safe and secured children anywhere else…..reason this year, Children’s Day was a day of sober reflection for me as a person.
The recent school abduction in Oyo State is not just another security incident. It is a national mirror. It should force us to ask a painful question “Why are Nigerian schools still not safe for children, more than ten years after Chibok?” If you can recall, in April 2014, the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls shocked Nigeria and the world. It became a defining symbol of the vulnerability of children and girls, especially schoolchildren, in the face of insecurity. The global outrage was loud. The promises were many. The phrase “Bring Back Our Girls” became a cry of pain, advocacy, accountability, and national embarrassment. Twelve years later, the question is not whether we remember Chibok, the question is whether we redesigned the system after Chibok. Because if the same pattern continues after a national tragedy, then the issue is no longer only an incident, it is a design failure.
While we say, “children are our future,” many Nigerian children are still learning under fear. Some are walking to school through unsafe communities. Some are sitting in classrooms without adequate protection. Some parents are sending their children to school with prayers that should never have become part of the school routine “May my child return home safely.”
We cannot continue to treat child protection as an emotional subject only, of course, we must feel outrage, we must feel compassion. Of course, we must mourn with affected families and pray for the safe return of abducted children and teachers…..but beyond emotion, children’s safety must become a deliberately designed national system.
Yes, it is good to have and keep having hope, giving annual speeches, responding after tragedy happens but unfortunately so, safe schools are not created by all of these but by intentional design.
It requires risk assessment, perimeter control, trained personnel, emergency communication, community intelligence, rapid response protocols, transport safety, parent notification systems, school mapping, inter-agency coordination, and continuous monitoring.
It requires government, school owners, community leaders, security agencies, parents, teachers, and citizens to understand that school safety is not an optional add-on to education. It is foundational to education. A child cannot learn properly in fear, a teacher cannot teach effectively in fear, a parent cannot support education confidently where school itself has become a place of anxiety.
In Nigeria we love and speaks passionately about children. We say children are blessing and call them leaders of tomorrow. We celebrate them at every given opportunity especially during Children’s Day. We organise events, give speeches, and post beautiful pictures. We pray for them. We sacrifice for them. We pay school fees under difficult economic conditions because we believe education can give them a better future. If we truly believe children are our future, then the systems around them must reflect that belief because a society reveals what it values not only by what it says, but by what it protects. So, if children are truly our future, then protecting them must become one of the highest tests of national seriousness.
I will keep saying this “every repeated failure is a design message” because when children are abducted from school, it is a security tragedy and much more when children continue to be abducted from schools across the country years after earlier tragedies, it becomes a systems question: What did we learn? What did we redesign? What did we fund? What did we enforce? What did we monitor? What did we sustain? What did we abandon after the headlines faded? This is the heart of the design problem.
Again, a system produces the result it is arranged to produce. If schools remain vulnerable, then somewhere in the arrangement of governance, security, education, infrastructure, community coordination, intelligence, and accountability, the system is not designed strongly enough to protect children.
This is not to say that protection is easy, I understand that Nigeria’s security challenges are complex. Many communities face difficult terrain, weak infrastructure, poverty, porous local security arrangements, and stretched public institutions. But complexity is not an excuse for design failure, complexity actually is the very reason why design is necessary because where risk is high, systems must be stronger.
Schools Must Not Become Places of Fear. After a childs home, schools are supposed to be one of the safest places in a child’s world. It is where children learn letters, numbers, friendship, confidence, discipline, imagination, and dreams. It is where teachers help shape the mind and where the future quietly begins. So now, when schools become unsafe, the damage goes beyond the immediate victims, parents begin to withdraw children, teachers become afraid and communities lose confidence. Girls are especially affected because insecurity often reinforces early marriage, domestic confinement, and the belief that sending girls to school is too risky. Children who escape physical harm may still carry emotional wounds.
While the Country loses something deeper: the belief that education is a safe pathway to a better life…..Sad!
This is why school insecurity is not only a security issue, it is an education issue. It is a development issue. It is a gender issue. It is a governance issue. It is a national future issue because when children cannot safely go to school, the future is already under attack.
After Chibok, this recent Oyo incident should now force a national redesign of school safety and not only temporary reaction, making promises, forming committees, going on symbolic visits or making emergency statements.
A real redesign would have asked: Which schools are most vulnerable?
What minimum safety standards must every school meet?
Who is responsible for enforcing those standards?
What security infrastructure is required in high-risk areas?
How are school authorities connected to community intelligence?
How quickly can help arrive when a school is threatened?
How are children trained to respond during emergencies without traumatising them?
How are teachers supported?
How are parents informed?
How are local governments held accountable?
How is funding tracked?
How is progress measured?
How do we know that a school is safer today than it was last year?
These are design questions and until we answer design questions, we will continue to repeat emotional reactions.
The Oyo Incident Is a Warning and it should trouble us deeply because it reminds us that school insecurity is not only a distant problem. It is not only a North-East problem, it is not only a rural problem, it is not only a problem for “other people’s children.” As matter of fact, it is a Nigerian problem. And if it is a Nigerian problem, then it requires Nigerian seriousness.
My fear, we must avoid the dangerous habit of normalising tragedy. No society should become so used to the abduction of children that it simply moves on to the next headline. Every abducted child has a name, has a family, has a dream and every child represents a future that society has a duty to protect. Children are not statistics. They are not news items, they are not collateral damage in a poorly secured society, they are the future in human form.
Hence, we must start doing differently?
First, we must stop treating school safety as a reactive matter. Security should not begin after an attack. Every state and local government must know the risk profile of schools within its territory. Schools in vulnerable areas must be mapped, monitored, supported, and integrated into a functional security-response system.
Second, we must move from policy announcement to implementation discipline ie we suffer from weak execution, weak coordination, weak accountability, and poor continuity. If there are safe-school standards, then citizens must ask: who is implementing them, how much has been funded, which schools have been covered, and what evidence shows improvement?
Third, school owners and administrators must take safety governance seriously.
Whether public or private, every school should have a basic child-protection and emergency-response plan. There should be access control, visitor management, communication protocols, staff training, parent contact systems, and clear procedures for responding to threats.
Fourth, communities must become part of the safety architecture. Schools do not exist in isolation. Communities often notice unusual movements, threats, suspicious activities, or emerging risks before formal agencies do. Community leaders, local associations, transport operators, farmers, religious institutions, youth groups, and vigilante structures must be organised responsibly into early-warning and reporting systems under lawful coordination.
Fifth, parents must demand safety accountability, not only academic performance.
It is good to ask about grades, exams, uniforms, and fees. But parents must also ask schools: What is your emergency plan? How do you control access? How do you communicate with parents in a crisis? What safety training do teachers have? What is your relationship with local security agencies?
Sixth, citizens must keep the pressure beyond the news cycle. Our civic attention must not expire after a hashtag trends. We must continue to demand updates, implementation, rescue efforts, school-safety funding, and accountability. A society that forgets too quickly teaches leaders that outrage can be managed by silence and time.
“The children are our future” is not just a comforting phrase, it is a responsibility! If children are our future, then the future must be secured then Nigeria must redesign the systems that expose them to danger. That Future Must Be Designed.
The real question before us this Children’s Day is not whether we love our children. The real question is whether we have designed a country that protects them. Ten years after Chibok, the answer should have been obvious.
But the recent abductions remind us that the work remains unfinished. So, on this Children’s Day, let our tribute to children go beyond celebration, let it become commitment, accountability and redesign. Because the future does not protect itself. Today’s adults must design systems that protect it.
Thoughts by:
ATINUKE ODJENIMATransformational Growth Catalyst
