The federal government has moved to quell a wave of panic sweeping across Nigeria’s education community, flatly denying reports that gunmen stormed the Federal Government Girls’ College (FGGC) in Monguno, Borno State.
Yet even as officials insisted the school was never touched, a separate statement from the military has muddied the picture, raising uncomfortable questions about who, exactly, the public should believe.
In a statement issued Monday and signed by the director of press and public relations, Mrs. Folasade Boriowo, the Federal Ministry of Education described reports of an attack on FGGC Monguno as “false, misleading, and capable of causing unnecessary panic among parents, guardians, and the general public.”
The ministry said its own verification, including, it claimed, direct communication with the school’s principal, confirmed that the college remained secure, with every student, staff member,, and boarding facility accounted for. Academic and boarding activities, it insisted, were continuing “in a peaceful environment.”
The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, went further, stating that no FGGC Monguno student had any connection to the incident being circulated online. According to the minister, those actually affected were remedial students studying outside the college, and the Borno State Government was already working to ensure their welfare.
The ministry used the moment to issue a broader appeal to Nigeria’s fast-moving information ecosystem, urging journalists, bloggers, and social media users to verify claims through official channels before publishing, warning that unverified reports could “undermine public confidence” and distract security agencies from the real work of protecting schools.
But the ministry’s version of events sits awkwardly alongside a statement issued a day earlier by the acting military information officer of Operation HADIN KAI, Mohammed Goni.
According to that account, troops backed by the Nigeria Police Mobile Force foiled an attempted mass abduction at the school after suspected ISWAP terrorists, allegedly aided by collaborators, gained access to the facility.
The military said all 46 students on the premises at the time were evacuated to Kinnasara Barracks in Monguno for medical assessment and care.
That an armed incursion serious enough to prompt a barracks evacuation could occur at the very institution the ministry insists was never breached has left room for public confusion and has fueled the kind of anxiety the government says it is trying to prevent.
Whatever the precise sequence of events in Monguno, the episode lands against a grim national backdrop. School abductions have become one of the defining security failures of Nigeria’s education sector.
Save the Children International estimates that at least 1,683 learners were abducted across the country between 2014 and 2022, while UNICEF has documented the closure of over 11,500 schools during the 2020/2021 academic year alone, disrupting learning for roughly 1.3 million children.
The pattern has continued into this year. In May, suspected Islamist militants abducted 42 pupils from a school and nearby homes in Askira-Uba, also in Borno State. Just weeks ago, the presidency announced the rescue of pupils and teachers seized from three schools in Oyo State’s Oriire council area after more than 50 days in captivity.
And looming over all of it remains Nigeria’s most infamous case: the 2014 Boko Haram abduction of more than 270 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, an event that permanently altered how the country, and the world, talks about school safety in Nigeria.
For parents in Borno State and beyond, Monday’s clarification was meant to offer reassurance. Instead, it has highlighted a recurring tension in Nigeria’s security communications: the gap between official reassurance and the accounts emerging from the ground.
Until the Ministry of Education and the military reconcile their competing narratives, anxious families may be forgiven for treating both statements with caution and for wondering whether “false and misleading” is the full story.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Ministry of Education says nothing happened at FGGC Monguno, while the military’s own Operation HADIN KAI statement says troops foiled an attempted mass abduction there and evacuated 46 students to a barracks for care.
Those two official accounts can’t both be fully right, and until Abuja reconciles them, “false and misleading” shouldn’t be taken as the last word.
