Michael Oyedokun taught mathematics at Community High School in Oriire. Nineteen days after gunmen took him, he is dead. The state held a meeting.

Michael Oyedokun was a maths teacher in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State. On May 15, gunmen stormed three schools in the area and abducted 39 pupils, seven teachers, and support staff. The victims ranged in age from two-year-olds to adults. Two teachers were killed in captivity. Oyedokun was one of them. He was beheaded.

Today is day nineteen.

In those nineteen days, here is what the Nigerian state produced.

A high-powered federal delegation visited the communities on May 31. A Federal Government team that included Femi Gbajabiamila and Nuhu Ribadu made the trip to Oriire. They conveyed the President's "deep concern." President Tinubu approved 1,000 forest guards. The House of Representatives passed a motion urging security agencies to rescue the abducted students and teachers alive. Senators used phrases like "barbaric act" and "shocks the conscience of the nation." The Senate President paid tribute to Oyedokun by name.

Michael Oyedokun attended Ogbomoso Baptist High School. He qualified as a teacher. He went to work. He has not come back.

The abductors told negotiators they would only speak to the governor, nobody else. The communication channel was described as "a relief" by one source, because "at least now they are talking." That sentence was published on the weekend of May 24. That was more than a week before Oyedokun was beheaded.

Here is how this pattern runs in Nigeria. A community is attacked. The government sends a delegation. The delegation conveys concern. The National Assembly convenes a motion. Someone describes the act as barbaric. Someone else calls for restructuring. The security agencies are urged to respond with "dispatch." Nothing dispatched arrives in time to save the person whose name, by then, the Senate President is reading into the record.

The forest guards were announced three weeks after the abduction. The House motion was passed in week three. The children of two-year-olds are still in captivity. The Old Oyo National Park, which borders Kwara State and opens onto international routes, has been described by a lawmaker as a hidden highway through which these killers move freely. The same lawmaker voted yes on the motion.

The teachers began an indefinite strike on June 1. It is in full compliance across public schools in Ibadan. Children arriving at Anglican Junior Secondary School on Orita-Mefa at 7:45 on Monday morning were turned back at the gate and told to go home. The state's response to a security crisis produced a second education crisis on top of it.

Let's dig deeper.

The question that usually doesn't get asked in the aftermath of these situations is the distribution question. Which Nigerians get the rescue operation and which get the motion? The retired Major General abducted in Katsina last week got a different kind of attention. His rank created urgency the institution could feel. Seven teachers and thirty-nine children from Oriire got delegations and tribute.

The First Lady said last weekend that "some of those terrorising us are non-Nigerians." She said a lot of foreign countries are helping. "No matter what happens," she said, "we shall overcome." She made those remarks in Ekiti. While there, she also distributed ₦100 million in business recapitalisation grants to 2,000 women traders. Each woman received ₦50,000. That event happened while Oyedokun was still alive.

He's not anymore.

The state's capacity for ceremony is limitless. Its capacity for rescue has a ceiling, and that ceiling keeps revealing itself at the same moment, in the same way, over and over again. A family buries a teacher. The government names what happened. Everything else stays the same.

The remaining teachers and children are still in the forest.