Bullying, fighting, cultism and intimidation rather than discipline, care and love appear to be ruling over the teaching-learning space in the boarding house of many Nigerian secondary schools. The increasing rate of bullying among school children from which some students have died is becoming a worrisome phenomenon. The most recent incident is the case of Master Sylvester Oromoni, a student of Dowen College in Lekki, Lagos who was allegedly attacked by some of his senior colleagues for refusing to join a cult group.

Oromoni’s father claimed his son was fed with some liquid substance and was thereafter intimidated not to disclose what had transpired. Although the Lagos State government had ordered the indefinite closure of Dowen College pending the outcome of an investigation into the death of Oromoni, the school, according to media reports, had earlier dismissed the claim, alleging that the deceased only sustained injuries while playing football with his colleagues.

Besides Oromoni’s, several other cases have been reported in recent times. The death of a 14-year-old female student, Kerean Akpaghaer of Premier Academy, Lugbe in Abuja, which occurred in June 2021 is another case. Kerean’s mother, Vivian Akpaghaer, claimed her daughter was raped; insisting that it culminated in complications that claimed Kerean’s life.

In August this year, Master Yahaya Nuhu, a 13-year-old JSS 2 student of Federal Government College, Kwali in Abuja died after he was allegedly beaten by a teacher, Mrs Gibson, for failing to do his homework. The deceased student had told the teacher about his indisposition. Dissatisfied with the student’s response, the teacher gave Yahaya some strokes of the cane after which the victim died at a hospital in Kwali. Authorities at FGC Kwali who were accused of covering up the case attributed the cause of Yahaya’s death to cerebral malaria while on admission at Rhema Clinic.

Controversies are bound to trail bullying cases where schools make frantic attempts to either deny or distort facts surrounding acts of cruelty. Schools do this mostly to preserve themselves in business. All this lends credence to the popular insinuation that education, especially in private schools, is more of a business enterprise than a corporate social responsibility. It is sad that government had consistently failed to appropriately call affected schools to order.

Managements are to blame for most of the bullying and other nefarious activities perpetrated in schools by senior students. Fagging and intimidation of junior students by their seniors would not survive where the boarding house is effectively monitored and supervised. Naughtiness among students would cease in schools where the wicked ones are promptly and appropriately punished.

The poor quality of teachers is responsible not only for the mismanagement of students’ disciplinary cases but also for the abuse of the powers conferred on teachers. Little do untrained or unqualified teachers realize that punishments are neither meant to please the authority nor cause pain to students. Punishments are, instead, intended to effect positive behavioural change in an erring student. It’s unprofessional for a teacher to over-react to a student’s misbehaviour with anger and fury.

The fact that some teachers and even school authorities failed to appreciate their worth by accepting from parents to render certain services that make them look more like ‘domestic servants’ than the teachers they ought to be, ridicules their noble value as character moulders. Such greedy teachers worship well-off parents as they shamelessly handle their children with kid gloves even when guilty of bullying.

While we call on government to strengthen its inspectorate services in monitoring compliance of schools, particularly privately-owned to policies, relevant prosecution agencies should ensure that justice prevails in the case of every student that died from bullying. The high incidence of bullying and fagging calls for teachers and school administrators to devote more time to supervising and monitoring students in their boarding houses. It is time to ban bullying in schools with a provision for one or two years of suspension as sanction for students guilty of it.

Teachers should be professional not only in discharging their duties without compromising standards in favour of students’ background but also in handling deviant behaviours among students. Misbehaviours must be promptly nipped in the bud. Grouping students to stay in dormitories according to their classes where senior students are separated from their juniors could help reduce bullying. To address the growing trend of cultism in secondary schools, government must design deliberate strategies involving parents and essential stakeholders to reverse the dangerous drift. Parents and teachers must see their roles as complementary, not conflicting, in the moral training of students. Daily Trust further urges government to ensure that adequate number of guidance counsellors is provided in schools.

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