Trouble in School, Death in the Dorm

ENGAGEMENTS BY Chidi Amuta

A couple of years ago, I was the guest of a good friend who had been elected a civilian governor of one of our states in the southern parts of the country. It was a weekend dovetailing into 27th of May which is normally Children’s Day. The gentleman invited me to accompany him and his entourage to a brief tour of some schools. He was fanatical about education, having risen from the depths of slum poverty to the height of his political career only by force of education. He loved to fraternise with children, to read passages from books with them and in the process get them to embrace a future shaped by ideas.

He frequently ended these school visits with a very informal question and answer session with the children at which they were free to ask him questions and also answer his. At this particular school, the governor decided to probe the career aspirations of the children who were obviously elated to see a governor in life and blood instead of just on television.

“What would you want to become when you grow up?” That was the simple question from the governor. A stream of screaming responses followed. “Governor!”, screamed one starry –eyed boy. “Militant!!” came yet another. “General !!!”, was another big boy’s ambition. “Governor’s wife!”, a shy looking girl volunteered in a meek voice. A few others tried to voice their preferences: “Doctor!!, Lawyer!!, Engineer!!!…” But these other mundane answers and aspirations were shouted down, their preferences drowned by the howling in praise of the earlier ones who wanted to become more sensible things.

Back in the car as we made to leave this school premises to return to Government House, we were all silent for a while. My host was crest fallen. He was shocked that all his investment of state resources in education through building of model world class schools would go into raising children whose best ambitions was to become “Governors” and “Militants”, ambitions fuelled by the desire to get rich quickly and live a life of material opulence and luxury, above work and lasting purpose. These were the kind of aspirations that he was spending all his energy to save the future of the state from. He wanted to build the state’s human capital through quality education and healthcare so that the future generations could compete with their peers in Japan, United States and Europe.

This tragic irony of a society gripped by the vicious curiosity of its own contradictions is one way of looking at the current epidemic of violence and bullying in Nigeria’s educational institutions. This for me is the effective prelude to the unfolding anarchy in the nation’s education system. It does not matter at what you level you look or in which direction of the national compass, the story is the same.

The University of Ilorin recently expelled a final year student for physically assaulting a female leccturer. The student, Saludeen Waliu Aanuoluwa of the department of Microbiology was expelled for beating up his female lecturer, Mrs. Rahmat Zakariyau. In addition to being expelled by the university authorities, the errant student was subsequently arrested by the police and is facing criminal prosecution for assault and related offences.

The Governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki does not suffer fools gladly. He has reportedly shut down Idogbo Secondary School in Ikpoba Okha Local Government Area of the state. The students recently went on rampage against the authorities of the school and extensively destroyed school property worth over N30 million. They beat up the principal of the school, manhandled and stripped a policeman deployed for security at the school. The governor has insisted that the school would remain closed until the students make restitution for all that destruction and damage. No one knows how the beating suffered by the principal can be restituted or how the hapless policeman who found himself stripped to his bare buttocks would have his privacy and other details fixed.

Similarly, police in Delta State is still searching for Master Michael Ogbeise, a Senior Secondary School 3 student of a private secondary school in Abraka. He beat beat his teacher, one Ezeugo Joseph, to death in a fit of anger over the teacher’s flogging of his junior sister as a disciplinary measure. His junior sister is still alive but the unfortunate teacher is dead. Master Ogbeise is at large, wanted by the police for murder.

In Ogun State last October, a mathematics teacher at the Itori Comprehensive Secondary School in Yewa Local Government Area simply identified as Mr. Owolabi was beaten to stupor by a male student when he tried to stop him from physically assaulting a female fellow student.

In all this gamut of school incidents and violent exertions, the one mishap that has gripped the attention of the nation is the sad story of young Sylvester Oromoni. A 12-year-old junior secondary school student of Dowen College, a high profile private school in Lagos, Sylvester recently died of injuries ostensibly sustained in the hands of senior fellow students who, from all accounts, are mere dormitory bullies.

Sylvester’s death has been surrounded by understandable public interest and incensed social media campaigns from all over the country and beyond. There has also been a flurry of controversy depending on whose version you are prepared to listen to. In a hurriedly scripted PR defense version put out by the school almost immediately after Sylvester passed on, the story is that Sylvester died of injuries he sustained playing football in school. But according to the circumstantial recollections of his parents and the series of eye witness accounts of fellow students, Sylvester died as a result of sustained physical assault in the hands of a group of school bullies. He had been subjected to bouts of extortion, beatings and other forms of abuse and bullying by a squad of insensitive seniors over time. The physical assaults led to grave injuries which eventually led to his death. By the time his parents could intervene in his medical treatment, the school authorities had sufficiently mismanaged the situation. The matter is actively under investigation by the police while the Lagos State government has shut down the school. Even President Buhari has weighed in on the criminal and moral dimensions of the tragedy.

Whether or not young Sylvester died of injuries inflicted by bullies or in the field of play, what this incident has revealed is a multiple crisis in our educational system. First is the reality of bullying as a constant feature of our schools especially the boarding schools. Second is the serial failure of school authorities to pay close attention to the welfare and wellbeing of the children entrusted to their care. There is of course the incidental matter of the less than close interest of wealthy parents to the welfare of their children once they have left them in the hands of authorities in some of these expensive schools.

In the case of private schools, it does seem that the profit motive which lies at the heart of the establishment of these schools has swarmed the moral responsibility of school authorities for the protection of the children placed in their care. Not only that, the responsibility of school authorities to ensure that schools have structures and personnel responsible for the non academic aspects of life on these school premises seems to be in decline. Responsible house masters and house matrons, professional healthcare personnel and responsible adult staffers as moral beacons on school compounds have increasingly vanished in the new educational infrastructures.

The emphasis these days has shifted to the architecture of school edifices and state of art equipment over and above the overall human capital content of the educational system. Ever busy and successful parents are often content to off load their children in these expensive schools in the hope that once the exorbitant fees have been paid, the rest will follow. But tragically it does not work that way. This is partly why we are witnessing increasing instances of bullying, substance abuse, homosexuality and social media trolling among school age kids mostly in these privileged schools.

Taken together, the various instances of violence and assault in our schools point to an overwhelming failure in our educational system. It is bad enough that standards of instruction and general attainment especially in the public schools are at an abysmal low. It is also lamentable that the increase in the number of private institutions has not raised the moral tone of the educational system in any substantial way. It would seem that the general moral decline in the Nigerian society is finding almost direct reflection in what is happening in our school settings.

A society in which leaders literally bully those who elected them into office to accept unpopular policies is the breeding ground for the madness in our schools and universities. The cultism on the campuses, the bully networks in school dormitories and the thugs that pass as undergraduates on our campuses all find role models in our thuggish politicians, garish priests and miracle merchants in the outer society. These outlandish role models are the very parents, uncles and aunties of the children unleashing mayhem on lur campuses.

Students that beat up their teachers, undergraduates that physically manhandle their professors, students engaged in regular free for all fights on campus are a refection of the anarchy in the outer wider society. The phenomenon of the strong bullying the weak and the use of powers of impunity to assert authority are all infiltrations of values from the wider society into campuses and school premises. The insensitivity to the feelings of others and the casual infliction of pain and injury on the weak and subordinate are mirror images of daily lived experience in real life Nigeria.

Further unexpected tales and images are tumbling out of our schools and places of learning. Older generations of Nigerians with memories of school and campus as hallowed places of learning and quiet contemplation must be finding it hard to bear the repeated drama of violence that has recently become the reality of our educational institutions. Our new national culture of impunity and violence seems to have found a comfortable lodging in school dormitories, university hostels and lecture rooms. The social media is replete with recent images and stories of violence in countless educational institutions.

The action that is called for is in the region of a national emergency. It is not enough to shut down schools where these outrages occur as the Lagos State government has done in the case of Dowen College or the Edo State government in the Ikpoba school. More is needed. The regime of regulation of schools both private and public must become national policy. Schools need to engage qualified guidance counsellors to help mould character and direct energies in schools. The old system of having accountable house masters and matrons must be reinstated. The criteria for the registration of private schools especially must be strengthened and made more rigorous. Annual renewal of school licenses should be instituted to avoid the deterioration of standards.

Moreover, the National Assembly must wade into the crisis of disorder and lawlessness in our educational institutions. Laws that prescribe specific jail terms for acts of thuggery, bullying and cultism in educational institutions must be legislated into place without delay. School authorities that fail in their duties must bear responsibility for what happens on their campuses and premises. For some reason, it remains curious that the federal ministry of education has maintained a studied silence on a matter that demands the declaration of a national emergency while politicians and social media influencers have a field day in no particular direction. In the end, national policy on so critical an area cannot be left in the hands of vote seeking politicians or attention hungry social media hounds. The educational system is perhaps the last remaining frontier of national salvation when everything else fails. We cannot abandon that frontier to the forces that have besieged our larger society.