Recent events have cast a harsh spotlight on a troubling pattern of selective public outrage in Nigeria, particularly concerning cases of child sexual exploitation and forced religious conversion. A new allegation involving a Department of State Services (DSS) operative has stirred memories of a similar national crisis from a decade ago, prompting difficult questions about consistency, narrative, and justice.
Echoes of the Past: The Ese Oruru and Yunusa Dahiru Saga
The year was 2016 when the case of Ese Oruru, a teenage Christian girl from Bayelsa, dominated national discourse. She was taken to Kano by Yunusa Dahiru (Yellow), a Kano-born artisan, who allegedly forced her to convert to Islam and married her without parental consent. The incident triggered a media firestorm and intense sectarian outrage, framed as a national crisis of religion and ethnicity.
Following immense public pressure, Ese was rescued while pregnant. In 2020, a Federal High Court sentenced Yunusa to 26 years in prison for child trafficking and sexual exploitation. An appeal later reduced his sentence to seven years, considering time already served. Notably, post-trial developments received less attention: Yunusa was described as a reformed inmate, completed his secondary education in custody, and was released in 2023. Ese Oruru, overcoming trauma, graduated from the University of Ilorin in 2025.
A Disturbing Present: The Walida Abdulhadi Allegations
Today, a new case with eerily similar contours has emerged, yet the public reaction stands in stark contrast. The Department of State Services (DSS) has confirmed the arrest of its operative, Ifeanyi Onyewuenyi, following a serious petition.
He is accused of abducting a Muslim girl, Walida Abdulhadi, keeping her in a DSS residence for two years, sexually exploiting her, and forcibly converting her to Christianity. Her family reportedly searched desperately for her during this period, losing her mother to the trauma. They discovered her whereabouts only when the suspect allegedly called her father on New Year’s Day 2026, claiming Walida had given birth to his child and he intended to marry her.
The family's lawyers have labeled it a grave abuse of office, demanding prosecution and an independent probe of the involved DSS facility. The DSS has condemned the alleged acts as a violation of its ethics code and promised a full, public investigation.
The Uncomfortable Question of Selective Outrage
This presents a critical and uncomfortable question for Nigerian society. A decade ago, the nation erupted over the abduction and alleged forced conversion of a Christian girl to Islam. Now, a Muslim girl is alleged to have suffered a parallel fate—abduction, rape, and forced conversion to Christianity—at the hands of a state security agent.
Will this case attract the same volume of condemnation, moral panic, and international scrutiny? Or will it be quietly processed, sidelined because it disrupts a preferred narrative? The deafening silence compared to the 2016 uproar is telling. It exposes how such tragedies are often weaponized, with hypocrisy flourishing and sectarian outrage drowning out nuance and the universal principles of justice and child protection.
The outcomes of the Ese Oruru case showed that justice, rehabilitation, and recovery can coexist. The test for Nigeria now is whether it can apply the same unwavering standard of outrage and demand for accountability, irrespective of the religious or ethnic identities of the victim and the perpetrator. Silence in the face of one injustice while decrying another is not neutrality; it is complicity in a dangerous double standard.
