I have come to an unavoidable conclusion: the rights of children are the rights of teachers, and the rights of teachers are the rights of children. These two cannot be separated. They are intertwined. Any advocacy that claims to protect children but ignores the safety, dignity, and welfare of teachers is incomplete. In the same way, any advocacy for teachers that does not place children at the centre of concern is also incomplete.

This conviction is the fundamental principle behind our programme, The TeacherFIRE® Revolution. We cannot speak of education, learning, child protection, or national development while treating the safety of teachers as a secondary matter. The classroom does not function in isolation. The teacher and the child share the same space, the same risks, the same fears, and the same hopes.

Recent reports of an attack on a school, where children were taken away, school officials were abducted, and a teacher was killed, have shaken me deeply. Even more disturbing is the reported killing of one of the abducted teachers in a manner so brutal that it is difficult to process. I have not been able to bring myself to watch the video said to have been released. Some images are not merely painful; they are soul-wounding.

For days, I have struggled to find words. I do not believe in writer’s block, but this situation has brought me close to it. The question that keeps returning to my mind is simple: if schools are not safe, if teachers are not safe, and if children are not safe, where do we go from here?

The operations of terrorists and violent criminals in Nigeria are not hidden. They are not unknown to us. The pattern has been visible for years. What was once thought to be a problem restricted to certain parts of the country has continued to spread. No state should assume it is immune. No school should assume it is sacred.

Every school in Nigeria should now be on red alert. There must be another layer of security beyond what currently exists. Schools can no longer be treated as ordinary spaces. They are now targets, and pretending otherwise is dangerous.

The first responsibility lies with government. The welfare and security of the people remain the primary purpose of government. This responsibility cuts across federal and state levels. Government cannot continue to speak after tragedies while failing to establish systems that protect schools, teachers, and children before attacks happen.

But the responsibility does not end with government. Pressure groups within the education sector must also rise. The Nigerian Union of Teachers, regulatory bodies, school owners, school leaders, and other stakeholders must not stop at issuing statements. Statements are not enough. Condolences are not enough. Press releases are not enough.

Teachers cannot be expected to continue teaching as though nothing has happened when their safety and the safety of the children in their care cannot be assured. We deceive ourselves when we say learning is taking place in an atmosphere of fear. Learning stops when children are afraid. Learning stops when teachers are afraid. A terrified classroom is not a learning environment.

Even when abducted children and teachers are rescued, the question remains: will they ever be the same? Will their school community ever be the same? Will their families ever recover fully from the trauma? We must begin to think seriously about the psychological, emotional, and post-traumatic effects of these attacks.

A teacher who goes to school does so to give children a future and a hope. Many teachers already work under difficult conditions. In many public schools, they teach with limited resources, poor welfare, and inadequate support. Compared with their counterparts in other parts of the world, many of them are already carrying an almost impossible burden. Yet, on top of all this, their safety cannot even be guaranteed.

What happens to the family of a teacher whose life is violently cut short? What happens to his wife, children, relatives, colleagues, and students? What happens when a family is forced to live with the memory of such a death? This is trauma without an end.

We must not treat this as just another incident. We must not move on as if nothing has happened. We have a major crisis on our hands. The education sector must confront it directly.

Evil does not rest until it is curtailed. The more evil is permitted to grow, the more it spreads. The more it is left unchallenged, the more confident it becomes. Nigeria cannot afford to continue like this.

I appeal to education unions, school leaders, parents, civil society, and every concerned citizen to hold the Nigerian state accountable for the welfare and security of the people. We must arise. We must do something about the state of our schools and the state of our nation.

In particular, teachers’ unions may need to consider calling their members out of the classroom until the safety of teachers and students can be empirically, tangibly, and strategically guaranteed by government at both the state and federal levels.

The safety of children is inseparable from the safety of teachers. To protect one, we must protect the other. To defend education, we must defend the people who make education possible.

Something has to happen. Something has to give. And it must begin now.