A CHILDREN’S DAY WRITTEN IN TEARS A Prayer-Lament for Nigeria’s Endangered Future

By Lanre Ogundipe

They told us today is Children’s Day.
So the flags are flying again.
Schools rehearse songs of hope.
Government convoys arrive with rehearsed smiles.
Officials wave at frightened children clothed in borrowed happiness,
while photographers freeze moments meant to deceive history.
But beyond the decorated stages and ceremonial greetings,
Nigeria is bleeding from the womb of motherhood itself.
For what shall we celebrate
when parents now sleep with one ear open to terror,
when the knock on the gate after sunset
sounds less like a visitor and more like fate approaching?

Somewhere tonight, a mother is holding a school uniform
that will never return to the classroom.
Somewhere, a father walks the length of his compound till dawn,
unable to sit because grief has made rest impossible.
Somewhere, grandparents stare endlessly at the road,
hoping a kidnapped grandchild will suddenly emerge from dust and miracle.
And somewhere deep inside forests ruled by evil men,
children whose only crime was innocence
are learning fear before they learn the meaning of nationhood.
Their tears fall silently into the soil of a country
that promised them tomorrow
but abandoned them to the cruelty of today.

O God of mercy,
what have Nigerian children done
that childhood itself has become a dangerous journey?
Schools have become hunting grounds.
Roads have become channels of mourning.
Homes have become rehearsal spaces for panic.
Parents now pray not for excellence alone,
but simply that their children return alive.
The ordinary act of going to school
has become an exercise in faith and survival.
And each time another child disappears,
the nation responds with statements polished in grammar
but empty of urgency.

We are tired of condolences without consequence.
Tired of assurances that evaporate before nightfall.
Tired of leaders who speak of security
while surrounding themselves with battalions funded by the same people left exposed.
How many childhoods must be buried
before governance remembers its sacred obligation?
How many tiny coffins must pass through our streets
before power learns humility?
For leadership is not domination;
it is protection.
And any government that can not secure the laughter of its children
is presiding over a slow funeral of national hope.

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Our leaders must stop playing God with human lives.
They gamble with statistics while parents gamble with prayers.
They debate policies while kidnappers negotiate human souls like commodities.
They measure success in speeches and ceremonies,
while mothers measure tragedy in sleepless nights and empty bedrooms.
No office is sacred enough
to justify indifference to the suffering of ordinary citizens.
No political ambition is important enough
to trade for the safety of children.
For every child kidnapped is not merely a family tragedy—
it is an indictment of national failure.

And what hypocrisy is greater
than celebrating Children’s Day in a country
where many children can not sleep without fear?
What cruelty is this annual ritual of balloons and marching bands
while countless parents move from police stations to prayer grounds,
from prayer grounds to rumors,
searching desperately for fragments of hope?
A true Children’s Day is not built with banners.
It is built with safety.
With functioning schools.
With roads free of terror.
With a nation where childhood is protected, not endangered.

O Lord, hear the cries hidden beneath Nigeria’s silence.
Hear the mothers whose breasts still ache for children stolen from them.
Hear fathers carrying invisible wounds too deep for language.
Hear frightened children whose innocence has been ambushed by violence.
Touch the hearts of those entrusted with power.
Break the arrogance that blinds leadership to human pain.
Teach this nation again
that children are not political decorations for annual ceremonies—
they are the living covenant between today and tomorrow.

Until Nigeria learns to value life above ego,
truth above propaganda,
and compassion above power,
our Children’s Day celebrations will remain incomplete.
For no nation truly celebrates its children
while failing to protect them from fear, bullets, and abduction.

And perhaps history will remember this generation
not for the speeches we made,
but for the children we failed to save.

Lanre Ogundipe, former President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists and the Federation of African Journalists, writes from Abuja.