PLEASE DON’T MAKE CHILD ABUSE NIGERIAN!

Teacher’s Diary

So much for the violent attacks on children and women up north. How about down south? How much protection does the ‘common’ Nigerian child have from various forms of subtle violations?

Children: hawk and work as house-helps to bring money into the family; children are used as carers for ageing relatives and their younger siblings; and children are sent alone on errands sometimes to faraway places where they have to walk for miles.

Pitiably, girls in particular suffer sexual harassments in the form of poking and verbal sexual assaults by pedophiliac ‘lay-abouts’ on the streets. Child labour is common place and seemingly acceptable. Child abuse is heavily among us. Preventing all forms of it is still not considered a high priority. Child abuse falls into four categories namely: neglect, physical abuse, psychological or emotional abuse and sexual abuse.

Physical abuse of children is all around you. Many parents and teachers persist in deliberately inflicting serious physical injuries on children. It’s easy to find children with bruises, scratches, burns, lacerations, broken bones and repeated unexplained mishaps. As of January 2015, corporal punishment of children by parents (or other adults) was banned in 44 countries. Nigeria is not listed among these countries of the world.

Corporal punishment is “the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence or to discipline or reform a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable”. The term connotes striking, spanking or slapping the wrongdoer with the hand, or using an implement such as a belt, a slipper, cane or stick.

Nigeria has not prohibited the use of corporal punishment in the home, day care, alternative care settings, schools, penal institutions and as a sentence for crime. Please refer to an online article titled ‘Nigeria – Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment for Children’. It is known that methods of child discipline vary widely.

We do know that although values, beliefs, customs and cultural methods of child discipline vary widely, parents and teachers genuinely want to raise children who internalise their guidance so that they’d become self-disciplined. Most parents and teachers want to pass on principles, guidelines and expectations. You honestly pine for your children to distinguish between right and wrong. You want to teach them self-control, increase their desirable behaviour while decreasing undesirable behaviour.

All your disciplining strategies are aimed at imparting a particular code of conduct. You want to develop and entrench desirable social habits to foster in them sound judgments and morals. Essentially, all you want is for your children to develop and maintain self-discipline to use for the rest of their lives. You however cannot continue to impart knowledge and skill with the cane! Do you realise that the word discipline means to teach, to impart knowledge and skill? Should these virtues be imparted forcefully?

Omoru writes from the UK