Nigeria’s worsening security crisis has made the question of how to protect school children more urgent. Over 1,400 Nigerian students have been kidnapped since 2014, with the mass abduction of 303 students and 12 school staff in Niger State being the latest. Similar raids in Kebbi, Zamfara, and parts of the North-West have pushed communities to the brink, forcing school closures, mass relocations of children, and widespread fear. For many families, every school morning comes with dread.
Amid the growing concerns, an unexpected player is pushing for a new approach to school safety: autonomous drones, artificial intelligence, and a funding structure designed to bypass the country’s chronic underinvestment in security.
UrSafe, a U.S.-based personal safety technology company founded in 2019 by Anthony Oyogoa and Ruma S. Patel, believes it could overhaul how vulnerable communities in Nigeria detect threats, deter attackers, and activate emergency response.
The company plans to deliver high-quality drone surveillance services at a fraction of the usual cost, without requiring government agencies to purchase and maintain their own drone fleets. This distinction is significant: drone surveillance means agencies pay for monitoring as a service, while drone fleets require them to buy multiple drones, handle maintenance, hire trained pilots, and invest in supporting infrastructure.
In Nigeria, the cost of a single prosumer or commercial drone in 2025 ranges from about ₦700,000 ($486) to over ₦7.5 million ($5,175). When agencies procure entire fleets—multiple drones plus charging stations, storage facilities, software, and trained personnel—the total cost for school-security programmes or other large deployments can easily climb into the tens of millions of naira.
On November 25, 2025, UrSafe signed a memorandum of understanding with Klass Security, a firm that provides security services to the Nigerian Ports Authority, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), and APM Terminals, which operates the Onne Port Terminal in Rivers State. Under the agreement, UrSafe will provide drone technology to enhance Klass Security’s operations, complementing its existing workforce of 150 security personnel.
“Our proposition is the phased introduction and integration of enterprise-grade Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and supporting technology to bolster facility security across Nigeria,” said Oyogoa. “Building on their current drone assets, this initiative will tailor and scale our aerial intelligence platforms to create a robust surveillance network for high-value protection zones. The project is presently in its initial assessment and development phase.”
A founder driven by personal history
For Oyogoa, the push to bring the company’s technology to Nigeria is not just business; it is personal.
His mother died in a Nigerian presidential plane crash, and the government funded his education from primary school to university as part of survivor support.
“This is my pay-forward,” he says.
From a personal safety app to a global security platform
UrSafe did not begin as a drone company. It launched in late 2019 as a hands-free, voice-activated personal safety app designed to let people trigger distress alerts using only a safeword.
Integrated with 911 systems in more than 200 countries, the app quickly gained popularity among travellers, dating platforms, employers, and vulnerable users because it offered a discreet, hands-free way to trigger emergency alerts in risky or unfamiliar situations. Dating platforms adopted it as an extra layer of protection during in-person meetups, while employers used it to safeguard staff who work alone or in high-risk environments without investing in costly monitoring infrastructure. It also resonated strongly with vulnerable groups, including survivors of domestic violence, students, the elderly, and people with medical conditions, who could summon help with a simple safeword, automatically share their location, and record audio or video without ever touching their phone.
By 2021, UrSafe was partnering with dating and travel companies globally. In 2022, it landed a multi-million-dollar agreement with Seeking.com, an online dating platform, which committed $30 million to integrate UrSafe’s emergency features for its global membership, a breakthrough that massively expanded the company’s footprint.
But the pivot toward drones and advanced surveillance came after a revealing insight: an app cannot stop an attack if there is no one equipped to respond.
This reality crystallised during UrSafe’s partnership with Nigeria’s 9mobile in 2022, where the company built panic-response technology only to discover that many emergency alerts in rural areas went unanswered. Police units were too far away, under-resourced, or constrained by logistics.
“Giving a teacher an app in a rural area is useless if no one comes when they press the button,” Oyogoa said. “The police were often too far or under-equipped to respond.”
While the partnership with 9mobile ended after one year due to a lack of funding, the lesson learnt was that reactive tools were not enough. UrSafe needed to build the first response itself.
The drone turn: Building a 911 system where none exists
UrSafe now positions itself as a full-stack security provider for regions that lack reliable emergency infrastructure.
“In the U.S., we augment existing 911 systems,” said Oyogoa. “In Africa, we are often the 911 system.”
The cornerstone of this shift is UrSafe’s drone programme; drones that can launch in 90 seconds, fly autonomous patrol routes, detect threats using artificial intelligence (AI), and relay real-time video to a control centre operated locally or remotely from South Africa or Colombia.
In March 2025, the company piloted versions of the system in Kouga Municipality, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, in critical infrastructure zones and municipal police departments. The model is now being adapted for Nigeria, where porous school perimeters and slow emergency response have turned classrooms into soft targets.
The flagship idea is “Safe School Zones”: predefined safe corridors and school perimeters where AI-equipped drones fly routine patrols, detect intruders, track suspicious vehicles, and provide a rapid visual feed during emergencies.
Thermal anomaly detection picks up heat signatures in bushes at night. Vehicle recognition identifies unauthorised convoys approaching schools. If something is amiss, the system triggers an alert, and the drone tracks the threat, hovering until law enforcement arrives.
For regions where children walk long distances to school, UrSafe envisions drones acting almost like a mobile escort, flying between predetermined points every morning and afternoon, and offering aerial overwatch.
Navigating Nigeria’s tough drone regulations
Nigeria maintains some of the continent’s most stringent drone regulations, with both autonomous and remotely piloted operations placed under tight control. Almost all drones weighing more than 250g must be registered with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), operators are required to hold a renewable five-year Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) Operator Certificate, and each mission must have a separately filed and approved flight plan.
Operations are also restricted to Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) at altitudes below 400 feet, drones are barred from flying over people or from moving vehicles, and BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) missions are prohibited without explicit NCAA authorisation. Foreign pilots must obtain special recognition; unlawful flights can lead to fines or up to three years’ imprisonment, and in high-risk areas such as the North-East, the military has imposed outright bans on unauthorised drone activity for security reasons.
Securing NCAA approval for BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) operations—where the pilot does not have direct visual contact with the aircraft—is exceptionally demanding and widely regarded as one of the most difficult drone permissions to obtain in Nigeria.
But, UrSafe says it is prepared.
First, the company’s drones are geo-fenced by default. They cannot physically enter restricted zones such as military bases or airport corridors without a cryptographic key held by government authorities.
Second, although UrSafe will provide remote oversight from abroad, each operation will still be led by a certified Nigerian Pilot-in-Command based at a local “Hive”—a small deployment site equipped with a drone dock, batteries, and control systems.
According to the company, this structure is fully compliant with Part 21 of the NCAA’s Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) regulations, which govern all aspects of RPAS operations in Nigeria. Part 21, built on the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), sets the rules for operator certification, aircraft registration, crew licencing, safety and security protocols, maintenance requirements, and both Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) and BVLOS flight operations.
Crucially, UrSafe is not seeking broad, nationwide approval for its operations. It seeks BVLOS clearance only for school corridors and predefined safe zones, which are easier to regulate and monitor.
Delivering “U.S.-grade” security at African prices
Drone surveillance is expensive. In the United States, municipal drone programmes can cost $15–20 million with hardware, training, and compliance costs factored in.
UrSafe says it can deliver comparable capability at just 5–10% of the typical cost, by dramatically reducing the expense of the “people layer” of drone-enabled safety. Instead of requiring custom software stacks, dedicated control rooms, or full call-centre teams, UrSafe shifts core functions such as location tracking, SOS escalation, live audio/video streaming, and 911 or local-emergency integration into a low-cost app subscription.
This approach allows local governments, schools, employers, and telecom partners to pair standard drones and existing first responders with UrSafe’s cloud-based alerting and monitoring system, eliminating much of the bespoke development, staffing, and integration work that typically drives up the cost of building and maintaining drone security programmes.
UrSafe says its technology has been independently validated through multiple layers of certification and testing, including ISO 27001 for information security and ISO 9001 for quality management, alongside FAA-equivalent approvals from South Africa’s Civil Aviation Authority.
The company also uses ISO-certified labs for hardware and software testing, undergoes third-party audits, and maintains immutable “black box” flight logs for every mission. Its system is benchmarked to deliver a three-minute drone response time within a 5km radius, significantly faster than typical ground response times in rural Nigeria.
A security model that doesn’t depend on state budgets
UrSafe’s business model avoids the traditional model of selling expensive drones to government agencies and instead operates a Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) system in which schools pay a monthly protection subscription rather than large upfront fees. The hardware is leased, the parental safety app uses a freemium model to drive wide adoption, and public-private partnerships help distribute recurring costs.
Premium payments from large corporate clients, such as oil companies, banks, and logistics firms, subsidise lower-priced plans for public schools, creating a sustainability loop that keeps the service accessible to those who need it most.
This model could bypass Nigeria’s broken procurement pipelines and avoid the fate of thousands of unused government drones gathering dust across Africa.
“We remove the heavy CAPEX burden,” Oyogoa said. “No more ₦50 million budgets. You only pay for the protection you use.”
Data, consent, and the ethics of watching children
With drones flying over schoolyards, the question of privacy becomes existential. The Nigerian Data Protection Agency declined to comment on the potential data challenges that may arise.
UrSafe insists its system does not track children.
“We track threats, not children,” Oyogoa said.
UrSafe says its system is built with strict privacy and data-protection safeguards, including a firm policy against using facial recognition on students and an opt-in model for parents who choose to activate the companion app. The company applies data-minimisation principles—video feeds are triggered only during incidents or alerts—and complies with both Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. All sensitive data is stored locally in Tier-III data centres in Lagos or Abuja, with cryptographic keys for restricted information held by government authorities.
According to the company, schools or government agencies serve as the data controllers, while the company acts solely as a processor.
“This is non-negotiable,” Oyogoa added. “All sovereign data belongs to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
An independent ethics board and UN Human Rights-based AI principles will guide deployment.
Preparing for Nigeria’s connectivity and power problems
Drones depend on flawless communication, something Nigeria’s infrastructure cannot guarantee.
UrSafe says it tackles Nigeria’s connectivity challenges with a triple-failover system: Starlink provides the primary high-bandwidth, low-latency link; cellular bonding combines MTN, Airtel, and 9mobile networks as a secondary layer; and, if both fail, long-range RF takes over, allowing pilots to manually control the drone within a 5–10 km radius even without internet access.
Each drone dock (“Hive”) runs on solar inverters and backup lithium-ion batteries, ensuring 24/7 uptime regardless of grid outages.
UrSafe believes nationwide scale is achievable through a “Hub and Spoke” model in which each preconfigured Hive, staffed by two pilots and capable of covering a 10-kilometre radius, or roughly 15–20 schools, can be deployed within days. Once supply chains are fully active, the company projects rolling out up to 50 new Hives monthly, expanding its fleet from 200 drones to 1,000 within two years, while training more than 100 local drone pilots in Nigeria in the first year to support the system’s growth.
If UrSafe’s model is implemented at the scale the company projects, thousands of schools in high-risk regions could receive consistent aerial monitoring without relying solely on overstretched police units, while the training of local pilots would create new technical jobs and strengthen Nigeria’s domestic expertise in drone operations. Progressively, this approach could move the country from reactive crisis response to proactive threat prevention, positioning drones not as high-end gadgets but as a core part of national safety infrastructure.Recommended: The Port Harcourt school churning out Nigeria’s math gurus
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