PRESS STATEMENT

The Movement for a Socialist Alternative (MSA) strongly condemns the closure of 41 Unity Schools across the country, which occurred at the peak of academic activities. This action is a clear sign of failure by the Tinubu-led capitalist regime. The announcement is nothing but an admission that the Nigerian state can no longer guarantee the safety and security of the people, which is an outright negation of the fundamental responsibility of any government.

Within the past week alone, over 300 secondary school pupils were kidnapped in Kebbi and Niger States, while additional abductions occurred in Zamfara and Kwara States. These incessant attacks expose the depth of the security collapse across the country.

The victims in all these incidents are overwhelmingly children of the working masses who attend public schools. Meanwhile, the children of the ruling elite learn in well-secured schools within Nigeria or attend expensive institutions abroad, funded by the resources extracted from the labour of the same working people now being abandoned to terrorists and kidnappers. This class divide is the reason the capitalist ruling elites remain unbothered by the worsening insecurity.

Under this corrupt capitalist order, terrorism and kidnapping have become lucrative industries. Despite the enormous resources controlled by the Nigerian state, successive governments have failed to curb the menace. Reports indicate that abductors have received billions through ransom payments over the years, further enriching criminal networks while the state remains incompetent or unwilling to act.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigerians paid N2.23 trillion as ransom between May 2023 and April 2024. Yet, instead of confronting the crisis, the Tinubu administration focuses on strategising for the 2027 elections just months into its first tenure.

Similarly, SBM Intelligence reported via BusinessDay on August 27, 2025, that 4,722 people were abducted in 997 incidents between July 2024 and June 2025. Kidnappers demanded nearly N48 billion, with verified ransom payments amounting to N2.57 billion. These figures reveal not only the scale of the crisis but also the total bankruptcy of the capitalist ruling elite.

Nigerians continue to suffer unbearable hardship as a result of this regime’s anti-poor, imperialist-driven policies. The commercialization of education has led to fee hikes of over 300 percent across federal universities, placing higher education out of reach for working-class families. The removal of subsidies, devaluation of the naira, hyperinflation, and the skyrocketing cost of petrol have pushed millions further into poverty. The working people now face both economic suffocation and physical insecurity.

The closure of schools is a tragic confirmation that the crisis is deepening. It shows that the structures of public life, schools, hospitals, transport, electricity, and housing are collapsing under the weight of a decaying capitalist system. In the same week, Nigeria witnessed the killing of a military general, the kidnapping of over 400 people, and numerous other tragic incidents.

After the Chibok abductions in 2014, the government launched the “Safe School Initiative” with over N600 billion reportedly spent. Yet schools remain unsafe, showing clearly that, like security budgets in general, these funds were either mismanaged, wasted, or looted under Nigeria’s corrupt capitalist system.

The continuous failure of the capitalist state to protect lives, provide basic security, or ensure access to public education exposes the economic failure of the system itself. The working people of Nigeria cannot continue to rely on a ruling class whose interests are fundamentally opposed to their survival and progress.

We call on the Nigerian workers, students, youth, and communities to organise against the anti-people, corrupt capitalist system that has kept the country underdeveloped, insecure and made it the poverty capital of the world. Only through mass democratic resistance, such as strikes, protests, community self-organisation, and the building of a revolutionary socialist alternative, can we challenge the anti-people policies that make insecurity, poverty, and school closures the norm.

Nigeria has the resources and capacity to guarantee free, safe, and quality education for all, but only a government of the working people run on socialist principles can end insecurity, reverse commercialisation, and deploy society’s wealth for the benefit of the majority, not the enrichment of a few.

Signed

Aj. Dagga Tolar

General Secretary, MSA