“The arrogance embedded in that silence is not accidental. It is structural. It reflects a presidency that has come to view the Nigerian people not as citizens to be served but as subjects to be managed — managed with rhetoric, managed with ceremony, managed with threats when necessary”
“Mother of the Nation” Is Not an Honorific. It Is a Responsibility.
While Nigerian children rot in forest captivity, the Tinubu family celebrates, threatens, and performs
On May 27, 2026 — Nigeria’s Children’s Day — at least 81 schoolchildren were sitting on forest floors in Oyo and Borno states, surrounded by armed men, some of them as young as two years old. They had been there for nearly two weeks. Their parents were not celebrating. Their teachers were not celebrating. Nigeria was not celebrating.
Oluremi Tinubu, Nigeria’s First Lady — the self-styled “Mother of the Nation” — was celebrating.
She issued a Children’s Day message. It spoke of discipline. It spoke of character. It spoke of education. It did not speak of the children. Not the real ones. Not the ones in the forest. Not the two-year-old toddler abducted by armed bandits from a nursery school in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State on May 15. Not the 42 pupils snatched from schools in Askira Uba and Chibok in Borno. Not the seven teachers dragged away with them.
It was, in every sense, the message of a woman who has confused the office of First Lady with a lifestyle brand — and confused ceremony with governance.
A Family That Performs, While Nigeria Burns
The Tinubu family has mastered the art of performance. They have not mastered the art of governance. They have not demonstrated the art of empathy. And they have certainly not demonstrated anything resembling accountability.
President Bola Tinubu, speaking on the same Children’s Day, did not announce a rescue operation. He did not declare a state of emergency on school security. He asked Nigerians to pray — pray for the repentance of the kidnappers — while a toddler slept on a forest floor with a gun at her back. He said the children were “not forgotten.” He said they were “not abandoned.” He offered no timeline. He offered no operational details. He offered no explanation for why, days after the abductions, not a single child had been brought home.
This is the same president who has presided over the award of $13 billion in government contracts to Gilbert Chagoury — a man with a Swiss money laundering conviction, a U.S. deferred prosecution agreement, documented placement in the FBI’s terrorism database for alleged Hezbollah financing, and a U.S. visa denial — without a single competitive tender. The Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway. The Tin Can and Apapa ports. Snake Island. Billions of public dollars flowing to a man banned from entering the United States, while schoolchildren cannot safely enter their classrooms.
The Tinubu family’s priorities are transparent. Contracts, not children. Fanfare, not rescue. Power, not protection.
The Ghost of Patience Jonathan
Nigerians remember what it looked like when a First Lady actually cared. When Boko Haram abducted the Chibok girls in 2014, Patience Jonathan — whatever her political failings — stood up publicly. She wept. She demanded action. She amplified the voices of grieving mothers. She was present, visibly and emotionally, in a moment of national trauma.
Remi Tinubu issued a statement about discipline and character.
The Chibok girls have now been in captivity for over a decade. Some were recovered. Many were not. And Nigeria’s school kidnapping crisis has only accelerated under the current administration. According to Save the Children, at least ten school kidnappings have occurred across Nigeria in less than two years, affecting approximately 670 children. Ten abductions. 670 children. And the First Lady is talking about character formation.
The arrogance embedded in that silence is not accidental. It is structural. It reflects a presidency that has come to view the Nigerian people not as citizens to be served but as subjects to be managed — managed with rhetoric, managed with ceremony, managed with threats when necessary.
The Threat Culture of Aso Rock
Because threats are part of this administration’s repertoire too.
Critics of this government have been arrested. Journalists have been harassed. Civil society voices have been intimidated. The detention of the NANS President — documented in Federal High Court Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/966/2025 — is a matter of public record. The Rivers State crisis, in which democratic governance was suspended and a trusted Tinubu ally installed as sole administrator is a matter of public record. The pattern is consistent: when Nigerians push back, the Tinubu administration does not respond with engagement. It responds with force.
This is a family that uses the machinery of the Nigerian state selectively and ruthlessly — against political opponents with speed and precision, against kidnappers holding children with vague reassurances and prayer requests.
The contrast should outrage every Nigerian parent.
Seyi Tinubu: The Corporate Beneficiary
Nor is it only the President and First Lady who have feasted at this table. Seyi Tinubu, the President’s son, sits on the board of CDK Integrated Industries, a Chagoury Group subsidiary, and shares a BVI company with Ronald Chagoury Jr. The son of the President of Nigeria is in business with the son of a man the United States government placed in its terrorism database.
This is not a footnote. This is the architecture of a kleptocratic presidency — one in which the machinery of state is deployed to enrich a tightly controlled inner circle while the country’s children are kidnapped from their classrooms and its First Lady talks about discipline.
“Mother of the Nation” Is Not an Honorific. It Is a Responsibility.
Oluremi Tinubu chose to accept the title “Mother of the Nation.” She did not have to. She could have declined the coronation, the ceremonies, the platforms built in her name. She did not. She embraced the grandeur. She has given speeches and attended galas and accepted the photographs and the protocol.
She accepted the title on the good days. She must be held to it on the terrible ones.
May 15, 2026 was a terrible day. Armed bandits walked into nurseries and high schools in broad daylight in Oyo State and took children — including a two-year-old — at gunpoint. Twelve days later, on Children’s Day, those children were still gone. Their mothers were not celebrating. The Mother of the Nation was celebrating.
That is not a metaphor. That is a moral failure. It is a failure of empathy, a failure of duty, and a failure of the basic human instinct that should animate any person — let alone any woman who calls herself a mother — when children are in danger.
Nigeria Deserves Better. The Children Deserve More.
The 2027 elections are approaching. The Tinubu administration is already maneuvering — building alliances, neutralizing opponents, managing narratives. The kidnapped children of Oyo and Borno are not part of that calculation. They were not part of the Children’s Day calculation either.
But Nigeria’s parents are watching. Nigeria’s teachers are watching. The families sitting in Oriire and Askira Uba and Chibok, waiting for word of their children, are watching. And the diaspora — those of us who have watched this presidency from abroad with growing horror — are watching too.
A government that cannot protect its children has forfeited its moral authority to govern them. A First Lady who cannot speak plainly about children in captivity on Children’s Day has forfeited the title she so enthusiastically accepted.
The forest does not care about ceremony. The children in it do not need discipline lectures. They need rescue. They need a government — and a First Lady — who actually gives a damn.
Nigeria is still waiting.
Kio Amachree | Stockholm, Sweden | President, Worldview International
