Family Seeks Oyedokun’s Remains After Oyo Kidnap Tragedy

Grief without a grave is the burden the family of Michael Olugbade Oyedokun continues to carry, nearly two months after the Mathematics teacher was killed in captivity following the mass abduction of pupils and staff in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State. In an open letter dated Tuesday and addressed to President Bola Tinubu, the family renewed its appeal for security agencies to recover his remains for what it described as a dignified and befitting burial.

The letter arrived in the shadow of relief and sorrow. Days earlier, the last of the abducted pupils and teachers taken during the May 15 raid on schools in the Ahoro-Esiele community regained their freedom, ending an ordeal that stretched beyond 50 days. According to accounts credited to the rescued principal of Community High School, Mrs Rachael Alamu, the kidnappers beheaded Oyedokun on the second day of captivity, while a second teacher, Esiyan Adegboye, was shot dead during the attack. Alamu was reported as saying the killings were carried out to pressure the government into meeting the abductors’ demands.

While Adegboye’s body was recovered and buried in Ogbomoso on May 22, Oyedokun’s remains have never been found. In its letter, the family thanked the Federal Government, the Armed Forces, the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force for the rescue operation, saying it “reaffirmed our confidence in the Government’s commitment to protecting the lives and liberty of its citizens.” It added, however, that its mourning could not end while his body remained missing. “The absence of his body has prolonged our grief and denied our family the closure that every human being deserves,” the family wrote, appealing to Tinubu to direct the same resolve that freed the survivors toward recovering the slain teacher.

The plea has drawn wider echoes. His widow, Mrs Mary Oyedokun, in an earlier video appeal, asked authorities in Yoruba to help her secure “a burial site for future reference.” A Yoruba cultural advocate and Lead of Abinibi Hub, Bunmi Adetona, urged the Oyo State Government to immortalise the teacher by naming a secondary school after him, while senior lawyer Femi Falana, through the Alliance on Surviving COVID-19 and Beyond, called on security agencies to retrieve the body from arrested suspects.

The Oriire tragedy carries a significance that extends beyond one family’s loss. Governor Seyi Makinde, who confirmed that seven students were seized from Community Secondary School alongside 18 pupils and seven teachers from a nearby Baptist school, has since called on the United Nations and international human rights organisations to investigate the incident, describing its circumstances as grave and unusual. His government initially signalled a willingness to negotiate, exposing the long-running friction between Abuja’s stated no-ransom stance and the pressures state governments face on the ground.

For analysts, the attack marked a worrying geographical shift. Data from ACLED indicates that Oyo accounts for only around one per cent of political violence recorded in Nigeria this year, yet the south-west has not historically featured in the large-scale abductions long associated with the north-east and north-west. Nextier’s Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database recorded 279 kidnappings nationwide in May 2026 alone, with kidnap victims climbing 19.7 per cent compared with the same month in 2025. Separately, THE AUTHORITY, citing a Nextier policy report, put the number of persons abducted between January and June 2026 at no fewer than 3,612, with the north-west accounting for 55 per cent of victims.

The pattern is neither new nor contained. The International Centre for Investigative Reporting has documented 26 major school attacks between April 2014, the year 276 girls were seized in Chibok, and May 2026, with at least 2,416 students abducted across that span. Just weeks after the Oyo rescue, about 40 students were reportedly kidnapped while sitting a National Examinations Council paper at a school in Askira/Uba, Borno State, on June 29. On July 11, a 60-year-old headmaster was briefly abducted in Itesiwaju Local Government Area of Oyo before his release, underscoring that the threat within the state has not lifted.

For the Oyedokun family, however, the statistics remain secondary to a single, unresolved absence. “Recovering his remains is more than a humanitarian act; it is a solemn obligation that reflects the dignity of every Nigerian life,” the family wrote, expressing hope that the appeal would receive “compassionate and urgent consideration” so that a husband, father, brother and son might finally be laid to rest.