Welcome to Monday’s roundup of Nigerian newspaper headlines, accompanied by our advocacy-focused calls on issues that impact citizens.

1. The Guardian: 42,000 Schools Still Vulnerable Despite $30 Million Safe School Funds

The repeated abduction of schoolchildren and teachers has once again exposed the cloudy fate of Nigeria’s Safe School Initiative, a programme launched after the 2014 Chibok tragedy, backed by roughly $30 million, and expected to protect more than 42,000 schools. Instead, the scheme appears to have been quietly boxed up and shelved somewhere between Abuja and Neverland, leaving schools in the North with crumbling infrastructure and wide-open gates that practically serve as ‘Welcome’ signs for kidnappers.

Our Take: It is time for those entrusted with protecting Nigeria’s children, from the National Coordinator of the Safe Schools scheme, Halima Illiya, to the Minister of Education, the National Security Advisor, and state governors, to step out of committee rooms and actually deliver on their mandates. Citizens deserve clear answers on where the money went, why the initiative is trapped in administrative purgatory, and how many more abductions it will take before leaders stop issuing condolences and start implementing concrete action.

2. Punch: Insecurity: State Assemblies move to debate state police

Nigeria’s worsening insecurity has finally pushed several state assemblies to dust off the long-debated idea of state police, just as President Bola Tinubu encouraged lawmakers to legalise it under new constitutional amendments. With fewer than 400,000 federal police officers supposedly watching over more than 200 million people, whole communities are left as open playgrounds for bandits, while security agencies stretch themselves thinner than a campaign promise.

Our Take: If state police is truly the solution they now claim it is, then President Bola Tinubu, the National Assembly, and state governors must see to it that the reforms, funding frameworks, and safeguards move from sound bites to signatures, not another round of ‘We are considering it’ while citizens play hide-and-seek with bandits who unfortunately never seem to get tired.

3. Daily Trust: World AIDS Day: Patients fear resurgence as US halts funding

Nigeria is currently experiencing major disruptions in Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) services, with clinics running short of testing kits, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), condoms, outreach activities, and antiretroviral refills following the Trump administration’s halt of foreign aid earlier this year, a move that affected funding typically routed through USAID and key programmes like PEPFAR.

Our Take: Nigeria cannot afford to let HIV services collapse, yet here we are, watching clinics run out of life-saving medications while officials issue soothing statements that seem designed more for press releases than for patients. This moment demands clear, responsible action from the Federal Ministry of Health, the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), and state governments to quickly restore funding pathways, strengthen local supply systems, and prevent life-saving treatment from slipping out of reach for millions.