Part One

Toyin Falola

The heartless murderers slaughtered the innocent schoolteacher…They did, not with any noble sense of purpose, as such nobility does not exist among savages and reavers, but for money. The money that has corrupted the land, reuniting the slave traders of old with the thieves of the moment.

As a teenager, I worked temporarily at an abattoir, and we must pray for forgiveness before killing an animal for food. As you take the knife, you must proclaim Bismillah.

Allahumma minka wa laka, Allahumma taqabbal minni.
O Allah, this is from You and for You. O Allah, accept this from me.

Michael Oyedokun was treated worse than an animal. His blood is on many people, not just his killers. Who did he offend? Who do we offend? God, why is our punishment so unbearable? The ransom his killers are awaiting is worse than the thirty pieces of silver that Judas Iscariot collected to betray Jesus.

The chalk still rested.
between his fingers
When they came.

Morning had barely opened.
its tired eyes over the village.
Children were already gathering—
sandals dusty, uniforms faded,
hope folded inside exercise books
like sacred paper prayers.

He had taught them
that rivers remember their sources,
that history is a mirror,
that words can rescue a nation
from darkness.

He believed
too deeply perhaps
in the stubborn power of learning.

So, he stood every day.
before cracked blackboards
like a farmer planting light
into hungry minds.

Then violence arrived—
not as thunder,
But as men
whose hearts had forgotten
the sound of mercy.

Gunfire shattered the morning.
Birds fled the mango trees.
Children screamed into the dust.
And there,
before unfinished lessons
and half-written arithmetic,
Their teacher fell.

The alphabet was scattered beside him.
like wounded birds.

Who kills a teacher
kills more than a man.
They murder tomorrow.
They slaughter memory.
They place fire
inside the library of the people.

His blood entered the soil.
where cassava grows,
where mothers wait,
where the nation endlessly searches
for itself.

That evening,
The classroom remained open.
A piece of chalk
still lay near the board,
and on it,
His final unfinished sentence:

“Education is…”

No child could complete it.
without tears.

Yet somewhere beyond grief,
his voice survives—
in every girl who still carries books,
in every boy who still dares to read
beneath broken roofs and failing light,
in every teacher
Who enters a classroom?
despite fear.

Nigeria,
How many of your gentle ones
must die before wisdom is guarded
more fiercely than power?

The teacher is gone,
But his lesson remains:
A nation that abandons its teachers
stands at the edge
of its own silence.

A nation that allows its teachers to be slaughtered

Has imposed a mortal curse on itself.

His death is a curse.

A village named positively as Oriire (good luck) is converted negatively to Oriburuku (bad luck). What hope remains to the Oriire community? Our emotional pain is deep. Curses are upon us, and all the religious people in the land must engage in endless prayers. This is not the time to forgive our enemies. Whosoever prays for the forgiveness of the killers of Michael Oyedokun will end the same way.

Cursed be the hands
that carried death into the dawn,
that silenced chalk and wisdom
with bullets, blades, and cowardice.

Cursed be the hearts
that saw a teacher not as a guardian of light
but as prey for darkness.
For Michael Oyedokun
carried no weapon but knowledge,
no shield but patience,
no ambition but to shape tomorrow.

He walked among children.
planting futures in fragile soil,
writing hope upon dusty boards,
believing that learning could rescue a nation
from the jaws of ignorance.

But evil came in the night,
merciless and hollow-eyed,
and struck down a man
whose only crime was service.

May the earth reject the memory
of those who feast upon innocent blood.
May their sleep be haunted
by the cries of orphaned dreams.
May every lesson he taught
rise as testimony against them.

A teacher does not truly die.
His voice lingers in the minds he awakened,
His kindness survives in the lives he shaped,
His labor becomes a river.
flowing beyond the reach of murderers.

And though Nigeria weeps today,
Though classrooms mourn in silence,
The name of Michael Oyedokun
shall stand taller than the shadows that felled him.

Peace to the noble teacher.
Shame upon the destroyers of light.