AAUA Tragedy: A Call for Safer Schools as Students’ Dreams Get Buried in the Bush, by Folaranmi A.

Editor’s note: In this piece, Folaranmi Ajayi shares the achy communicative of 2 AAUA students whose lives ended successful betrayal and violence. He raises urgent questions astir pupil information and challenges parents and authorities to enactment earlier much dreams are lost.

On 20 June 2025, 2 students of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko — John Friday Abah, a 200-level pupil successful the Department of Economics, and Andrel Eloho Okah, a 200-level pupil of History and International Studies, disappeared. They had near their hostels and ne'er returned. For weeks, their friends and classmates searched tirelessly, filed reports, and made nationalist appeals, but they were met with silence, delay, and organization indifference.

Folaranmi Ajayi mourns AAUA students and calls for safer learning spaces beyond field walls. Photo credit: @Legendaryoba1
Source: Twitter

Their abrupt lack created heavy interest and fearfulness among students. Colleagues who knew them good expressed vexation with the deficiency of advancement successful locating them. There was nary hint that their phones were switched off, and each efforts to scope them proved abortive. For implicit 2 weeks, thing factual was done. The lone connection passed astir was “calm down.”

On 13 July, quality broke. Their bodies had been discovered successful a wood on the Ondo-Ekiti border, decomposed, abandoned, and robbed of each dignity. The sorrow that engulfed the assemblage assemblage was rapidly replaced with fearfulness arsenic further details began to surface. The police, during a property briefing 4 days later, revealed that the landlord of the antheral victim, Mr Oladele Femi, had masterminded the abduction. Working with 2 accomplices, 1 of whom remains astatine large, helium coordinated the full cognition that led to the brutal r*pe and execution of the 2 students.

It is hard to fathom that a landlord, idiosyncratic entrusted with the information of young people, could betray that spot successful specified a grotesque manner. He not lone participated successful the abduction but besides helped conceal their murder. According to the police, the victims were held captive, during which a sum of ₦800,000 was withdrawn from Friday’s slope account. Eloho was sexually assaulted by 1 of the accomplices, and some she and Friday were yet executed to destruct immoderate accidental of exposure. Their bodies were dumped successful distant areas to hold find and erase evidence.

As an educator, my bosom bleeds. We walk years guiding students done learning processes, encouraging them to go productive citizens, and preparing them for a satellite filled with opportunities. Yet, however tin they thrive erstwhile that satellite is hostile? How bash we proceed to promote acquisition erstwhile our students tin beryllium kidnapped and murdered by those meant to support them?

This incidental raises heavy concerns astir pupil safety, peculiarly for those surviving off-campus. Our universities are surrounded by backstage hostels, and precise fewer institutions instrumentality work for monitoring who runs them. Who supervises these landlords? Who registers them? Where are the structures for accountability?

Dreams buried successful the bush: Folaranmi Ajayi urges enactment for safer schools aft AAUA students’ deaths. Photo Credit: AAUA
Source: UGC

To parents, I impulse caution. While we observe our children’s independence, we indispensable not detach wholly from their realities. Safety should not beryllium assumed. Visit their hostels. Know the landlords. Engage with the school’s information portion and importune connected updated interaction points. Encourage your children to physique a beardown assemblage astir them — peers, mentors, and groups that volition instantly consciousness their absence.

To schoolhouse authorities and authorities bodies, we indispensable statesman to dainty students' lives with the urgency and seriousness they deserve. We can nary longer trust connected luck oregon reactionary policing. A vetting strategy for hostel landlords indispensable beryllium institutionalised. Reports of missing students should trigger contiguous investigations, not bureaucratic responses. Students surviving off-campus should beryllium portion of a integer alert web that tracks safety, attendance, and welfare. Education is not implicit without protection.

John and Eloho were not conscionable names. They were dreams, ambitions, and the aboriginal of our nation. They did not merit to dice the mode they did, abandoned successful the wilderness, victims of greed and betrayal. Their communicative should not beryllium reduced to a quality rhythm oregon a property briefing. It indispensable beryllium a turning point. If we stay silent, past we are each complicit. If we take comfortableness implicit justice, past we, too, person failed them.

Let this beryllium the last. Let this beryllium a wake-up call. Let their deaths propulsion america to enactment for each different pupil who walks into a hostel contiguous and prays they aftermath up tomorrow.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed present are those of the writer and bash not needfully bespeak the authoritative argumentation oregon presumption of Legit.ng.

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Source: Legit.ng