By Latifah Ajetunmobi | Parent & Teen Coach, Nurse, and Author.
I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while. Today, at last, I can.
The children of Oriire are home.
After 56 days in captivity, the schoolchildren and teachers abducted from three schools in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State have been rescued—alive—and returned to their families. When the news broke on the night of July 10th, a weight lifted off the chest of an entire nation.
I watched the footage of those little ones with tears running down my face. Children eating biscuits. A teacher, surrounded by her pupils, saying “thank you” through everything she had survived. After 56 days in a forest.
This is an example of strength, resilience, and love for life. This is a lesson for all of us — and we should all admire how those little ones are teaching us how to be strong.
Gratitude Where Gratitude Is Due
I want to extend my admiration and gratitude to every single person involved in bringing these children home:
The security operatives who walked into dangerous terrain, some injured by explosives planted along their path, and who did not stop until every child was accounted for. The parents who kept vigil for eight impossible weeks. The mothers of Yawota, who refused rice and cash from visiting officials and said words this nation must never forget: “We don’t want money. It is our children we want.” The teachers who marched in Ogbomoso. The faith communities who prayed without ceasing. The Nigerians who protested to express their displeasure about the situation. The vigilantes, hunters, and volunteers who know that forest better than any map.
May God bless you all and give you strength to continue.
The Ones Who Did Not Come Home
We celebrate with trembling. Teachers lost their lives in this ordeal, among them Mr. Michael Oyedokun, a mathematics teacher who stood in front of children as an educator and paid the ultimate price for it.
People often call those who protect children heroes. But I have learned something across decades of nursing and family work: standing up for children does not make us heroes. It is a natural human duty. The real heroes are the children who endured, the families who waited, and the teachers who shielded their pupils with their own lives.
Every future conversation about school safety in Nigeria must carry their names.
The Rescue Is Over. The Healing Is Only Beginning.
Now I must speak as a coach and a nurse, gently but honestly, because this is where my life’s work lives.
A child’s freedom can be restored in one night. A child’s sense of safety is rebuilt one conversation at a time.
Children who survive an ordeal like this do not simply “bounce back.” In the weeks ahead, their families may see nightmares and disrupted sleep, clinginess and regression, flinching at sounds, sudden anger or unsettling silence, and fear of the very classrooms where their safety was broken. None of this means a child is damaged. It means a child is processing.
Here is what helps for the families of Oriire, and for any family whose child has faced something frightening:
Presence over pressure. Do not interrogate a child for details, and do not silence them either. Children release their stories in fragments a sentence at bedtime, a question in the car. Receive each fragment with calm. Your calm becomes their calm.
Routine is the language of safety. Regular meals, predictable bedtimes, familiar play. Rhythm tells a child’s body what words cannot: the danger is over.
Name feelings without forcing them. “It’s okay to feel scared sometimes, even now that you’re home” gives a child permission to be honest. Forced cheerfulness teaches them to hide.
Watch the quiet ones. The child who “seems fine” may be carrying the most. Withdrawal is a signal, not recovery.
Let the village carry the weight. In our Yoruba tradition, a child belongs to the whole community. That community must now show up with counseling, patient teachers, faith support, and neighbors who understand that healing is not a race.
Please Follow Up With This
I ask you, from my heart, do not let this story end with the celebration.
Please keep following these families. Keep asking about the counselling and support the rescued children receive. Keep asking your leaders what is being done to protect schools — because since 2014, from Chibok to Kebbi to Niger and now Oyo, too many Nigerian childhoods have been stolen from classrooms.
Our children should be memorising multiplication tables, not survival strategies.
To every parent reading this, wherever you are in the world: hug your children a little longer tonight. Safety is not a given. It is a gift. And when your child one day faces something frightening big or small they will not need a perfect parent. They will need a present one, who can sit beside them and say:
“Whatever you feel is allowed here. And I am not going anywhere.”
Welcome home, children of Oriire. Nigeria wept for you. Now Nigeria must heal with you. 🕊️The Children of Oyo Are Home: A Lesson in Strength, Resilience and Love for Life