Rule of Law Failure and the Protection of Vulnerable Populations in Nigeria: A Scholarly Analysis of the Kebbi Schoolgirl Abductions and Christian Persecution

Introduction

The November 2025 abduction of 25 schoolgirls from Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State, represents not an isolated security incident but a critical manifestation of systemic rule of law collapse in Nigeria.

When viewed through the lens of judicial effectiveness, security sector governance, and protection mechanisms for vulnerable populations—particularly Christian girls—this incident exposes profound institutional failures that enable both criminal actors and create conditions for religious persecution.

FAF analysis examines the legal, institutional, social, and political dimensions contributing to these recurrent tragedies, while evaluating potential accountability mechanisms and protective strategies for the international community.

The Scale of Crisis and Intersectionality of Victimization

Nigeria faces an unprecedented kidnapping epidemic that has transformed from a localized criminal enterprise into a structural security failure affecting multiple regions and vulnerable demographic categories.

Between July 2024 and June 2025 alone, Nigeria experienced 4,722 kidnapping incidents claiming approximately 762 lives and generating ₦2.57 billion (roughly $1.66 million USD) in ransom payments.

The annual abduction rate has escalated catastrophically: while approximately 1,683 schoolchildren were abducted through December 2022, by 2025 this figure had surged to an estimated 5,000 victims annually across Nigeria.

The Kebbi Attack Within Broader Context

The Kebbi incident occurred against a backdrop of recurrent mass school abductions dating to the infamous Chibok kidnapping of April 2014, when Boko Haram seized 276 girls—of whom approximately 98 remain unaccounted for more than a decade later.

The incident typifies how bandit-led operations have partially displaced ideological terrorist kidnappings in Nigeria’s northwest, with criminal organizations now extracting ransoms rather than pursuing overt ideological conversion objectives, though gendered and religious dimensions persist.

Christian girls face compounded victimization within this crisis.

The 2018 Dapchi abduction exemplifies this intersection: of 111 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, 110 were subsequently released after negotiations and intervention, but Leah Sharibu—the sole Christian girl among them—remained in captivity for years because she refused forced conversion to Islam.

This case establishes that religious identity intersects with gender to create heightened vulnerability, with Christian girls explicitly targeted for forced conversion, sexual slavery, and “marriages” to militants.

As of 2021, approximately 30% of Nigerian women aged 20-24 had experienced child marriage, with 12% married before age 15, a substantial proportion occurring through forced conversion and abduction by extremists.

The Kebbi abduction thus participates in a documented system of sexual slavery, forced religious conversion, and gender-based violence targeting Christian girls specifically.

Rule of Law Failures: Institutional Capacity and Accountability Deficits

Structural Weakness in Law Enforcement and Prosecution

The immediate failure that enabled the Kebbi abduction highlights a fundamental lack of institutional capacity and coordinated rule-of-law implementation.

Governor Mohammed Nasir Idris of Kebbi State revealed that the Department of State Services had issued a credible pre-attack intelligence warning.

Yet, security personnel mysteriously withdrew from the school approximately 30 minutes before dawn—precisely when the bandits struck.

This constitutes not merely a tactical failure but also potential evidence of deliberate sabotage or complicity, questions central to the rule of law's integrity that remain uninvestigated and unprosecuted.

Nigeria’s law enforcement suffers from catastrophic resource constraints that undermine the basic institutional capacity required for protective rule-of-law functions.

The Nigerian Police Force received approximately ₦969.6 billion (US$808 million) in its 2024 budget, representing only a 3.3% increase from 2023.

In comparative perspective, South Africa—with one-quarter of Nigeria’s population—spent US$5.6 billion on police in 2024, while Egypt allocated US$8.7 billion.

More perniciously, budgetary allocations for daily police station operations are frequently withheld from actual stations, leaving commanders to source funds informally.

One police division receives only approximately ₦10,000 (US$7) daily for operational expenses, while fuel allocations are insufficient to provide even 12 liters per station per day across Nigeria’s estimated 5,556 police stations.

These resource constraints translate directly into enforcement failure.

Nigerian police lack modern investigative technology, rely on obsolete equipment, and officers frequently operate without two-way radios, bulletproof vests, or walkie-talkies, using personal mobile telephones for communications.

This technological gap positions the police decades behind both organized criminal groups and terrorist organizations, fundamentally undermining their capacity to conduct intelligence operations, coordinate rescue efforts, or conduct complex investigations necessary for successful prosecution.

Prosecution and Conviction Deficits

The rule-of-law promise of accountability through criminal justice fails due to endemic weaknesses in the prosecution.

Data from Kebbi State itself illustrates the systemic prosecution gap: the state’s legal justice system shows significant case backlogs, with numerous charges pending trial for extended periods.

Low prosecution rates and police corruption remain major impediments to Nigeria’s criminal justice system, with investigations frequently failing to result in prosecutions and sentences commensurate with the severity of the crime.

Nationally, kidnapping remains largely unpunished despite statutory prohibitions across multiple jurisdictions.

While several states, including Ondo and Imo, have imposed death penalties for kidnapping, this reflects not successful deterrence but rather compensatory legislative escalation in response to enforcement failure.

The actual problem, scholars emphasize, is not the absence of legal frameworks but the systematic non-enforcement rooted in corruption, poor investigative capacity, and societal complicity.

Nigeria’s criminal justice system suffers from what scholars term “criminal justice apathy”—a pervasive unwillingness or inability to apply existing penalties, rendering statutory law a symbolic rather than operative constraint on criminal behavior.

The Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Enforcement and Administration Act of 2003 (amended 2005, 2015) provides comprehensive protections, including civil remedies for trafficking victims, establishment of transit shelters, and a Victims of Trafficking Trust Fund for compensation.

Yet implementation remains minimal, with underfunding, limited victim awareness, and inconsistent application characterizing the legal framework’s operative reality.

Religious Persecution, Gender-Based Violence, and the Intersection with Rule of Law Collapse

The Documented Pattern of Religious Targeting

Christian girls abducted by Boko Haram and affiliated groups face qualitatively different treatment than Muslim peers, creating a justice problem that transcends kidnapping to encompass crimes against humanity and potential genocide charges under international law.

Survivors recount systematic forced conversion attempts, sexual slavery, and rape explicitly used to punish Christian identity.

One survivor, Ruth, described how Boko Haram militants subjected her to repeated rape and forced labor, with captors explicitly targeting her faith: “They kept pushing us to denounce Christ… Each day after they returned from their attacks, they would beat and rape us”.

The gendered dimension of religious persecution involves specific mechanisms of marginalization.

Abducted Christian girls face community stigmatization upon escape, with survivors labeled “Boko Haram wives” and rejected by their own families and communities.

Agnes, another survivor, escaped Boko Haram captivity only to encounter rejection: “Nobody from my family cared to come and pick me up… relatives and friends refused to come and welcome me because they were regarding me as a ‘Boko Haram wife’”.

This secondary victimization through community stigmatization represents a justice system failure distinct from criminal apprehension—it reflects the absence of victim support infrastructure and social protection mechanisms that rule of law systems should provide.

Absence of Specialized Victim Protection and Trauma Services

A critical rule-of-law failure concerns the protection of victims and the rehabilitation of trauma.

Psychological research documents that Boko Haram’s former captives suffer severe trauma requiring “intensive psychological treatment,” yet Nigeria lacks systematic, adequately resourced trauma services for survivors.

Some freed captives become so psychologically transformed that they reportedly opened fire on military rescuers, illustrating the depth of trauma.

Female survivors display complex trauma symptomatology, including forced indoctrination into extremist ideology, psychological attachment to militant “husbands,” and severe PTSD with sexual violence manifestations.

Nigeria does not operate comprehensive trauma-informed justice systems capable of supporting vulnerable witnesses.

The Neem Foundation provides psychological services for approximately 1,250 beneficiaries monthly in Borno State—a capacity wholly inadequate for Nigeria’s displaced and traumatized populations.

Trauma-informed governance, which emphasizes the restoration of victims' dignity and the prevention of secondary victimization, remains absent mainly from Nigerian institutional practice.

Current legal frameworks, such as the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015, while nominally protective, lack “explicit dignity-oriented mandates” and fail to address “broader psychosocial and dignity-related needs of victims”.

The Rule of Law Crisis of Impunity

The most fundamental rule of law failure in Nigeria concerns impunity for massive-scale abduction, sexual violence, and religious persecution.

The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor concluded in December 2020 that sufficient evidence existed to open investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Nigeria since 2010.

Yet four years later, in December 2024, the Prosecutor’s office had still not even submitted the initial investigation request to Pre-Trial judges.

This delay—despite clear ICC legal jurisdiction, overwhelming victim complaints, and documented atrocities—represents what Amnesty International characterizes as unacceptable “deprioritization,” leaving “victims and survivors of the conflict waiting with no explanation”.

Domestically, Nigeria has ratified the Rome Statute but failed to enact implementing legislation since 2012, preventing the prosecution of international crimes at the national level.

A proposed Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, Genocide and Related Offences Bill languishes in parliament without passage, effectively ensuring that even the most severe atrocities escape accountability through any available national or international mechanism.

This convergence of domestic prosecution failure and international justice delay means that perpetrators of systematic kidnapping, sexual slavery, and forced conversion operate with effective immunity.

No senior bandit commander, Boko Haram leader, or military official responsible for negligent protection failures has faced prosecution for crimes against humanity.

This impunity signals to criminal actors that abduction, enslavement, and gender-based violence produce minimal legal consequences, directly undermining deterrence and enabling recurrence.

Geopolitical and Security Structural Factors Enabling Victimization

Border Security Failures and Cross-Border Criminal Networks

Kebbi State’s geographic position creates structural vulnerabilities that rule-of-law mechanisms have failed to address. Kebbi borders Zamfara, Niger, and Sokoto states—all experiencing acute insecurity—and shares international boundaries with both the Niger Republic and Benin.

Bandits exploit porous borders and dense forest corridors connecting Kebbi to neighboring jurisdictions, conducting cross-border raids and retreating to staging areas beyond effective Nigerian security reach.

The Nigeria Immigration Service has initiated the deployment of e-border solutions in Kebbi, including real-time intelligence and surveillance systems at designated control posts.

However, these technological initiatives remain incomplete and insufficiently integrated with broader security coordination.

More critically, the National Counter Terrorism Strategy (NACTEST)—designed to provide an integrated multi-agency response architecture—remains only partially implemented in the northwest, creating an “operational vacuum” that criminal and militant groups actively exploit.

The “Battle Fatigue” of Overstretched Security Sectors

Security specialists emphasize that Nigeria’s law enforcement operates in a state of chronic incapacity, characterized as “battle fatigue.”

Dr. Aigbe Diyeli, a criminologist at Caleb University, argues that Nigeria’s response remains “largely reactive rather than preventive,” with agencies overstretched and gaps deliberately exploited by organized bandit groups.

The school abduction itself reveals this reactive posture: despite credible pre-attack intelligence from the DSS, security coordination failed, prevention mechanisms did not activate, and rescue capabilities proved insufficient to prevent the abduction.

Technology and coordinated intelligence operations represent acknowledged gaps.

Specialists stress that authorities must “embrace technology, including drones and digital tracking tools, to strengthen search operations and deter future attacks,” yet such capabilities remain systematically underfunded and underdeployed.

The absence of “visibility policing” through technological means and coordinated inter-agency operations creates precisely the conditions enabling large-scale abductions to occur despite warning intelligence.

International Legal Frameworks and Accountability Mechanisms

Application of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Obligations

Nigeria, as a state party to the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, is bound by international law to protect civilians during armed conflict.

Non-International Armed Conflict legal standards established by international humanitarian law explicitly prohibit kidnapping, sexual slavery, forced marriage, and forced recruitment of children—precisely the practices characterizing Kebbi and broader Nigerian abductions.

However, enforcement of these international humanitarian law obligations has proven ineffective due to Nigeria’s failure to domesticate compliance mechanisms and establish effective enforcement institutions.

Scholarly analysis concludes that “the right of civilians and civilian objects have, over the course of the various conflicts in Nigeria, been violated,” with “insufficient and unproductive enforcement mechanisms, which essentially amounts to the poor enforcement of International Humanitarian Law”.

The core problem reflects “not the failure of the IHL to promote effective protection of civilians but the unwillingness of the parties in the conflict to conform to the rules of IHL”.

The Palermo Protocol and Trafficking Victim Protections

Nigeria ratified the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons on December 13, 2000.

The Palermo Protocol establishes comprehensive victim protection obligations, including confidentiality, legal assistance, psychosocial support, housing, medical care, compensation mechanisms, and protection against discriminatory treatment.

The Protocol obligates states to provide “appropriate housing, counselling and information, in particular regarding legal rights,” medical and psychological assistance, and opportunities for employment, education, and training.

Nigeria’s implementation of these Protocol obligations remains minimal and fragmented.

While the Trafficking in Persons Act provides a statutory framework, victims lack reliable access to the protections specified in the Protocol.

Survivors of kidnapping-for-ransom frequently receive no psychosocial support, no witness protection, and no meaningful access to legal remedies or compensation.

The Victims of Trafficking Trust Fund, authorized under Nigerian law, lacks adequate funding and operates at a vastly insufficient scale relative to victim populations.

Regional Justice Mechanisms Through ECOWAS

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice has emerged as a potential accountability mechanism for sexual violence and gender-based crime victims in the region.

A 2025 ECOWAS Court judgment found Côte d’Ivoire in violation of rape survivors’ rights to remedy, access to justice, physical and moral integrity, and dignity.

The court ordered Côte d’Ivoire to investigate crimes, prosecute perpetrators, issue public apologies, and pay compensation of fifty million FCFA (approximately $83,000 USD) to survivors.

Additionally, the ECOWAS Court has reaffirmed that member states, including Nigeria, possess binding obligations to ensure reproductive justice, including access to safe abortion services for rape survivors.

These jurisprudential developments establish that ECOWAS provides an accessible supranational accountability forum when national justice systems fail, and that regional courts recognize the gendered dimensions of armed conflict victimization.

Nigerian civil society organizations and victims’ networks have increasingly leveraged ECOWAS as a remedial forum when domestic justice proves unattainable.

This represents a potential avenue for accountability regarding Kebbi victims and broader patterns of kidnapping, sexual violence, and religious persecution. However, ECOWAS enforcement depends upon national governments’ political will to comply with judgments.

Potential Protective Strategies and Accountability Mechanisms

Trauma-Informed Governance and Victim-Centered Justice Approaches

Scholars and practitioners increasingly advocate for trauma-informed governance that reconceptualizes victims as central to justice processes rather than peripheral to them. This framework mandates

(1) institutionalized trauma-informed training for all law enforcement, judicial, and social service personnel

(2) comprehensive victim-support frameworks integrating legal redress, psychosocial counseling, peer-support networks, and livelihood reintegration

(3) legislation explicitly mandating dignity-restorative obligations, including state-funded psychosocial support

(4) independent accountability monitoring mechanisms assessing victim satisfaction and psychosocial outcomes

(5) anti-stigma initiatives combating community rejection of abduction survivors

(6) dedicated recovery units specifically addressing kidnapping victims as a priority national concern.[icanpeacework]

These mechanisms address the gap between formal legal prohibitions and operational protections for vulnerable populations. Implementation would require legislative reform, resource allocation, and institutional capacity-building—all currently absent from Nigerian governance architecture.

Community-Based Protection Models and Collective Responsibility Frameworks

Yobe State’s experience provides evidence that community-based vigilante recruitment and resident engagement create “a sense of collective responsibility” because “an attack on one student is an attack on the entire community”.

This approach involves recruiting and training community-based volunteers alongside formal security structures, establishing evacuation plans, training designated personnel, and creating escape routes within schools.

While state-level initiatives cannot substitute for federal security reform, localized community engagement has demonstrably improved school protection in some jurisdictions.

The Safe School Initiative, funded with ₦144.8 billion for 2023-2026, attempts to provide standardized protection frameworks, yet implementation suffers from poor coordination between security agencies and school management.

The Kebbi attack’s death of the vice principal reflects inadequate coordination protocols between security personnel and educational institutions.

Strengthening coordination mechanisms, establishing clear evacuation procedures, and institutionalizing community participation could enhance protective outcomes.

Restorative Justice Frameworks for Survivor Healing and Accountability

Restorative justice offers a complementary accountability approach emphasizing victim-centered healing alongside offender accountability.

Unlike retributive justice, which focuses solely on punishment, restorative approaches center on repairing harm, fostering offender accountability, and encouraging community involvement.

The Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 established a statutory foundation for restorative practices in Nigeria, which several states, including Lagos and Edo, have expanded through dedicated restorative justice centers and practice directives.

For kidnapping survivors, restorative justice offers mechanisms for

(1) community acknowledgment of harm

(2) offender accountability through dialogue facilitation (where survivor safety permits)

(3) reparations and compensation arrangements

(4) community healing circles addressing secondary victimization

(5) reintegration support acknowledging survivor resilience. Implementation requires expansion of restorative justice infrastructure currently concentrated in southern states to northern jurisdictions experiencing acute kidnapping crises.

International Prosecution and Accountability Mechanisms

Immediate ICC advocacy should focus on compelling the Prosecutor’s office to end its four-year delay and submit investigation requests regarding Nigeria to Pre-Trial judges.

The Prosecutor has identified eight potential cases against both Boko Haram members and Nigerian security forces; proceeding with investigations could establish precedent for accountability regarding systematic kidnapping, sexual slavery, and religious persecution.

A second accountability avenue involves targeted sanctions and criminal prosecutions of senior military and government officials responsible for intelligence failures, protection negligence, or apparent complicity.

The principle of command responsibility—established in international law through the Rome Statute and customary international humanitarian law—holds superior officers accountable for subordinates’ crimes when superiors knew or should have known of violations and failed to prevent or punish them.

Kebbi’s governor’s allegation of intelligence failure and withdrawal of security forces suggests potential command responsibility on the part of relevant senior military and DSS officials.

A third mechanism involves universal jurisdiction provisions that enable third states or international courts to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes, or trafficking, regardless of where the crimes are committed.

Several Western nations have universal jurisdiction statutes enabling prosecution of foreign nationals for grave crimes; international cooperation could enable prosecution of bandit commanders or Boko Haram leaders in third-country venues when domestic prosecution proves politically impossible.

Regional Security Cooperation and Cross-Border Intelligence Sharing

The Accra Initiative, launched in September 2017 by Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo (subsequently expanded to include Mali and Niger as observers), represents a regional cooperation framework anchored on three pillars

(1) information and intelligence sharing

(2) training of security personnel

(3) coordinated counter-terrorism operations.

While underfunded and relatively obscure, the Initiative demonstrates potential to serve as a regional architecture to prevent the spillover of extremism and kidnapping networks across borders.

The UN Secretary-General has called for a strengthened regional cooperation architecture, including restructured coordination between ECOWAS and the Alliance of Sahel States, rebuilt trust between ECOWAS and non-member countries, and dedicated financial resources supporting coordinated regional intelligence and security responses.

Cross-border intelligence sharing regarding Kebbi specifically requires formalized coordination with the Republic of Niger, through which bandits retreat after kidnappings.

Current arrangements remain inadequate and insufficiently resourced.

Legislative Reforms and International Advocacy Regarding Religious Persecution

The United States’ November 2025 redesignation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act, citing grave, systematic, and ongoing religious persecution, represents significant international pressure.

Coalition advocacy highlights four key demands Nigeria must satisfy for CPC removal

(1) increased security and early warning systems for Christian communities

(2) swift prosecution of attackers

(3) facilitation of safe return for internally displaced persons

(4) repeal of Sharia blasphemy laws enabling mob violence against religious minorities.

These recommendations translate into concrete legal and institutional reforms.

Abolishing blasphemy laws would remove judicial infrastructure enabling prosecutions of Christians under religious statutes, as occurred with Yahaya Sharif-Aminu (imprisoned for over five years for a WhatsApp message deemed blasphemous) and Rhoda Jatau (imprisoned 19 months for condemning a lynching).

Repealing such provisions aligns Nigeria with international human rights obligations while removing legal pretexts for persecution.

Trump's Remarks stir a tusmani in Nigeria

U.S. President Donald Trump made public remarks following the abduction of 25 schoolgirls from a secondary school in Kebbi State, Nigeria, in November 2025, linking the incident to what he described as the persecution of Christians in Nigeria by “radical Islamists”.

Trump stated that Nigeria should face consequences if the government continues to allow the killing of Christians.

This claim has drawn both support and criticism for oversimplifying the complex security situation in Nigeria.

His comments have sparked a political storm in the U.S., with some supporting his stance on religious persecution. In contrast, others argue that the reality in Nigeria is more nuanced, involving multiple ethnic, spiritual, and criminal factors rather than a single narrative of Christian persecution.

Trump’s remarks were widely reported and have contributed to renewed debate over U.S. policy toward Nigeria, with some lawmakers echoing his concerns about religious freedom and others cautioning against politicizing humanitarian crises.

The Kebbi abduction itself has reignited national and international attention on Nigeria’s ongoing struggle with mass school kidnappings and the broader insecurity affecting northern regions.

Conclusion

Toward Genuine Rule of Law and Vulnerable Population Protection

The Kebbi schoolgirl abduction of November 2025 crystallizes profound rule of law failures extending far beyond any single security incident.

The convergence of institutional incapacity, resource constraints, pervasive corruption, ineffective prosecution, absence of victim protection mechanisms, and systematic impunity creates conditions enabling recurrent kidnapping, sexual slavery, and religious persecution of Christian girls and women.

When examined through scholarship emphasizing the rule of law as dependent on institutional effectiveness, accountability of state officials, transparent legal processes, and equal protection for vulnerable populations, Nigeria demonstrates critical deficiencies across all these dimensions.

The international community has multiple leverage points to compel accountability and improve protection. Immediate actions should include

(1) persistent ICC advocacy ending prosecutorial delay and initiating investigations

(2) imposition of targeted sanctions against military and government officials responsible for intelligence failures or complicity

(3) comprehensive technical assistance strengthening Nigerian prosecution capacity and trauma-informed victim services

(4) utilization of ECOWAS judicial mechanisms to establish accountability precedents

(5) continued diplomatic pressure regarding religious persecution and blasphemy law abolition.

Medium-term institutional reforms require investment in police capacity-building, intelligence infrastructure, cross-border security cooperation, and comprehensive, trauma-informed victim services aligned with international humanitarian law and trafficking protocols.

Restorative justice frameworks adapted to Nigerian contexts could complement criminal prosecution while centering survivor healing and community accountability.

Ultimately, protecting vulnerable populations—particularly Christian girls in Nigeria’s northern regions—depends upon genuine rule of law institutional development emphasizing accountability, transparent justice processes, and victim-centered protection mechanisms.

The current crisis reflects not primarily security capacity gaps but rather systemic governance failures enabling criminal actors’ impunity while leaving vulnerable populations abandoned by the institutions legally obligated to protect them.