Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Jimoh Ibrahim, has argued that the United Nations lacks the power to investigate the Oriire school abduction because it is a domestic security matter. That proposition sounds authoritative, but it is contradicted by both history and the United Nations’ own record. It is a very bad way for Ibrahim to start an assignment on that world stage.

The United Nations has, for more than a decade, examined mass school abductions in Nigeria. Following the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, on 14 April 2014, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), acting under its treaty mandate, launched an inquiry into Nigeria’s handling of repeated abductions of women and girls.

On 6 March 2025, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced the Committee’s findings, concluding that “grave and systematic violations” of women’s and girls’ rights persisted in Nigeria. The Committee held that the Nigerian state had repeatedly failed to prevent abductions, rescue victims, prosecute perpetrators and provide effective remedies. It specifically found that Nigeria had failed “to prevent abductions, rescue and protect women and girls from abduction and prosecute and adequately punish perpetrators.”

Nor was Chibok an isolated intervention. Following the abduction of more than 300 schoolboys from the Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, on 11 December 2020, and subsequent attacks on schools in Zamfara and Niger States in early 2021, United Nations human rights experts issued a statement on 11 March 2021 criticising Nigeria for failing to conduct “an impartial, independent investigation” into the incidents. They urged the authorities to establish accountability, strengthen protection for schools and provide urgent rehabilitation for traumatised children.

The intervention of the United Nations did not stop there. On 26 February 2021, following the abduction of students from the Government Girls Secondary School, Jangebe, Zamfara State, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, through his spokesman, strongly condemned the attack, demanded the unconditional release of the students and called for those responsible to be brought to justice. Around the same period, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict repeatedly condemned attacks on schools in Zamfara, Kebbi and other parts of Nigeria, warning that the targeting of educational institutions constituted a grave violation of children’s rights under international law.

Nothing in Governor Seyi Makinde’s appeal falls outside this well-established pattern. He did not ask the United Nations to govern Nigeria, deploy troops or usurp the country’s sovereignty. He merely requested an independent international inquiry into an atrocity that shocked the nation and attracted global attention. Such requests are entirely consistent with the work of UN human rights mechanisms, which exist precisely to examine grave violations wherever they occur.

Ambassador Ibrahim therefore mistakes scrutiny for sovereignty. The United Nations examines human rights questions not because it governs countries, but because states, including Nigeria, have voluntarily accepted obligations under international treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

International scrutiny is not foreign occupation. It is one of the accountability mechanisms that responsible nations themselves helped to create.

If the United Nations could investigate the aftermath of Chibok (2014), scrutinise Kankara (2020), condemn Jangebe (2021), monitor attacks in Zamfara, Kebbi and Niger States (2021) and continue documenting Nigeria’s recurring school abductions, there is no legal or moral reason why Oriire (15 May–10 July 2026) should suddenly become untouchable.

The real question, therefore, is not whether the United Nations can look into the Oriire abduction. The documentary record leaves little room for doubt that it can, and that it has repeatedly done so in comparable cases.

The more pertinent question is this: if there is nothing to hide, why should anyone fear an independent inquiry?

Adewale is a political scientist.