Nigeria’s editors have issued a blistering warning that the nation is sleepwalking into a humanitarian catastrophe, with children now the primary targets and casualties of insecurity, state failure, and systemic neglect.
The alarm was sounded in Lagos on Tuesday at the UNICEF–NGE–DAME World Children’s Day event, where the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Eze Anaba, declared that the country is in a “state of emergency” not seen since the civil war.
The government’s elevation of the national security alert level, he said, is merely an official acknowledgement of a crisis that communities have been living through for years. What has changed in recent weeks, he said, is the brazenness of school raids, mass abductions, indiscriminate killings, and communities emptied overnight. And at the centre of every incident, Anaba noted, is the same grim denominator: children.
“Whenever we try to understand who the latest victims are, we find children—killed, injured, displaced, or traumatized. The bloodshed has been relentless,” he said.
He stated that the World Children’s Day—created 71 years ago to protect children’s rights—now lands in a country where schooling is an act of courage. In swathes of the North, classrooms are shuttered, teachers have fled, and parents weigh the risk of education against the possibility of never seeing their children again.
According to him, investigations by multiple organisations, including UNICEF, show that Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children globally, Girls disappearing from education at accelerating rates, millions of infants go unvaccinated every year, child labour and early marriage are rising, while children are being recruited as fighters in conflict zones.
These indicators, Anaba argued, are not abstract. He described them as evidence of a country forfeiting its future. “With half of Nigeria’s population under 18, the collapse of childhood equals national destabilisation,” he said.
Media accused of complicity through silence
Accusing the media of complicity through its “silence”, Anaba said journalists must confront their own failures. For years, he said, “newsrooms have documented atrocities without interrogating causes, accountability structures, funding gaps, policy failures or the profiteers of violence.
“The media is not a neutral observer. Our reporting can shame leaders into action—or allow impunity to thrive,” he said.
He called for investigative series tracking child abduction networks, data-driven reporting using verifiable sources,
exposure of government inaction and policy breaches, coverage that highlights solutions and models that work.
He noted that civil society groups were now performing duties that belonged to the state by rescuing children, rehabilitating trauma victims, negotiating access to schools, and providing protection services.
UNICEF, he said, has become the primary supplier of data, training, and scientific evidence for child welfare, information the government should be gathering itself.
Anaba suggested the enforcement of child protection laws that already exist, emergency investment in education and health, prosecution of those responsible for school attacks,and secure learning environments.
Anaba challenged every sector to take a measurable action, not a speech, not a pledge, but a deliverable. “Our advocacy means nothing without consequences,” he said.
He concluded his speech with a sharp indictment of the system.
“A society that can not protect its children, he implied, is a society already in collapse, whether it admits it or not,” he stated.
