Tomiwa Olamiju
Bullying in schools has been a silent occurrence that has been going on in most boarding schools for many years. Incidentally, it’s now a public decry from parents over fears of who may be the next victim following the death of the 12 year old Dowen college student that died recently after he allegedly received beatings from his seniors. Tomiwa Olamiju, in this report, writes stories of some bully victims.
Korede Olakiyesiwa, an alumni of King’s college, Lagos, shared the experience he had with a senior student during his stay between the year 2010-2013. Korede said, “it was a saturday morning, when most seniors don’t go to the dining room for breakfast. After breakfast, a senior sent my friend and I to go back to the dining room and act like we had not eaten so we could collect some beancakes also known as ‘Akara'”.
Korede continued, “we were scared to go because it was against the school rules to collect meal twice, but for the fear of the senior, we had to summon a little courage. We had a little luck and were able to get more than we expected, we kept 2 each in our pockets and took the remaining ones to him. Unfortunately, he saw as we kept some in our pockets, he took us to his hostel thereafter and asked us to lie down flat on our chests. We did all manners of punishments while receiving belts on our backs for more than one hour”.
Olakiyesiwa added, “he took us to the bathroom and asked us to enter a mini tank then he put on the shower. Gradually the water filled our heads, it was like I was seeing my death coming. He asked us to bury our heads in the water, and the moment we tried to breath by bringing our heads up the water, he was there to flog us. After the whole situation, I went home sick in less than a week, and was admitted in a hospital where I received several drips.
An ex student of Federal government college, Odogbolu, who identified himself as Adedapo Micheal, while recollecting how his first experience started said, “my first day in a school, a senior student walked up to me and asked for my provisions or else he would make me suffer in the school during my stay. With fear in my mind I gave him all my beverages, then he left without even saying thank you. He came for my provisions many times after then and threatened to make me suffer if I report to the school authority”.
Adedapo who was a student of the school from 2012 to 2014 added, “there was a time when the most feared senior student asked me to iron his white shirt on a Monday morning, and unluckily for me I got it burnt, this was a senior no junior student would talk to while keeping facial contact, so I told the senior I burnt his cloth and pleaded for mercy, but I received one of the worst beating of my life that Monday morning”.
He said, “the senior flogged me with a mop stick and when it broke, he took another one and it broke again, then he said I should go to class and return to his bunk after night prep, and I knew what that meant. So after the night prep I hanged around the hostel for a while, then with a friend we went to a nearby bush to sleep for the night, the next day we did the same thing and the day after that”.
According to Micheal, being bullied in the school then was a normal phenomenon and only those with the bully’s as their school fathers escaped the most of these experiences. The school tried their best in curbing these issues but their best wasn’t enough. “A school with over 2000 boarding house students and very few house masters have little they can do”, he said.
Recollecting one of his many bully experiences, Micheal explained how he went to report to one of the house masters and the cold reply he got.
He said, “on this faithful saturday evening, a senior ordered me to bring his food from the dining room to his hostel, which was against the rules of the school, the senior threatened me with a lot of things if I refused to do as he said. Unluckily for me, I wasn’t able to smuggle the food out of the dining room. On reaching the hostel, the senior told me to lay under his bunk, it was a low bunk but he asked me to squeeze myself inside”.
Micheal continued, “I was under the bunk for nothing less than 2 hours, infact I slept and woke up, then at a time, I ran away and headed straight to my house masters house to report the issue, and all I got was ‘i am eating come back later’. I couldn’t go back to the hostel cause I knew the implication, so I went to the school clinic and pretended like I was sick, so they admitted me for the night”.
“These occurrences made my grades very low because I wasn’t able to focus on my studies, my parents had to withdraw me from the school at some time”, Micheal concluded.
The President of the National Association of Nigerian Students NANS, Comrade Asefon Sunday Dayo in an interview with him said, “NANS condemns every act of bully as the act is barbaric, devilish and unacceptable”.
Sunday continued, “we have started a campaign against bullying from our tertiary institutions down to the primary school and we will not hesitate to take any legal action against anyone found culpable of this act”. We are also in contact with the head of all tertiary institutions who will work hand in hand with the committee set up by the leadership of NANS that will be visiting all institutions in Nigeria.
The Chairman of the National Association of Nigerian Students NANS investigative committee, Comrade Olademeji Uthman said the body is really concerned about such stories and is working a lot towards making sure cases of bully don’t occur in our schools any longer. He said, “at the level of the students body (NANS), we are so worried and more concerned about this menace mostly happening amidst our secondary school students. We are taking it upon ourselves to make sure we continue to organize our re-orientation programs for our public Basic and Secondary institutions and it will now be introduced to the Private educational institutions too”.
Olademeji added, “We have organized series of programs basically on Cultism, Drug Abuse and all other social vices and as we are going into a new year and a new term in our secondary schools, we will push the campaign more further”.
Barrister Folayan Martins, a Lawyer and human right activist, urged the government to take bully cases more seriously and implement more laws that bind against bully.
First Published 2021
