The impassioned outcry by human rights lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) during the June 12 demonstrations serves as a damning double indictment of the Nigerian state. Speaking to protesters, Falana laid bare a harrowing reality: school pupils and teachers in Oyo and Borno states have been abandoned to criminals for weeks. The ultimate horror—the beheading of a school teacher to coerce government action—demonstrates that the state has ceded its primary constitutional duty of protecting lives to lawless cartels. Falana’s revelation that these children are starving and denied medical care should prick the conscience of our political elite. Instead, it highlights a chilling official inertia. When a nation allows its youngest citizens to be weaponised by terrorists as bargaining chips, it forfeits its moral authority. Our security apparatus has failed at its core mission. Yet, this security breakdown is inextricably linked to the broader economic pathologies of the nation. Falana rightly connected the hostage crisis to crushing economic deprivation and state neglect. It is a profound paradox that a nation overflowing with immense natural wealth and capital resources continues to breed a population defined by hunger and absolute poverty. There is simply no structural justification for this level of misery. Poverty breeds the desperation that fuels the kidnap-for-ransom industry, while state funds that should secure our schools are lost to systemic corruption. As we mark another June 12 anniversary, Falana’s distinction between "civilian rule" and "true democracy" is a vital intellectual wake-up call. We must stop confusing the mere absence of military uniforms with the presence of democratic substance. True democracy cannot coexist with mass abductions, unchecked poverty, and state institutional decay. The federal and state governments must act immediately to rescue the Oyo captives. More importantly, Nigerians must heed Falana’s call to sustain civic engagement. Democracy is not a gift handed down by the ruling class; it is a fortress that citizens must continuously defend through relentless accountability on both economic equity and national security.
