- How to know when a child is being abused -Psychology Professor
- Only fake schools don’t beat, it’s compulsory, biblical – Cleric
- Our Faculties of Education not training teachers well, says Educationist
Ideally, a school should be a place to learn but stories of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in schools across Nigeria have triggered worries among many. This is especially when some have resulted in deaths.LADESOPE LADELOKUN reports on the implication of this to a nation battling to curb 20 million out of school children
Opeyemi Shittu, 9, had intended to keep to herself the story of the severe beatings she got from her headmistress. But the several marks that adorned her body after she was flogged gave her out.
Just as she left the bathroom the morning after the day she was beaten black and blue, it was impossible for the injury inflicted on her fair skin to go unnoticed, with several marks stamped on her back.
Worried, her father had inquired to know what happened on sighting her cane-disfigured back. But she would only speak unwillingly after much persuasion , bearing in mind that she could be victimized.
Sharing her experience at Tendergrip Nursery and Primary School in the Arogun area of Ogun State with Sunday Telegraph, she said: “Our class teacher was not in school. So, the headmistress stood in for her. Before the maths class started, I went to the toilet. I never knew she had instructed my classmates that they should leave a space after every line we wrote. I ended up not leaving a line. I was severely beaten. The following morning, my daddy saw marks on my back after leaving the bathroom. I was reluctant to tell him what happened. I eventually did. He told my mother to visit the school to express his dissatisfaction because he was under the weather at the time. I was also not feeling well. My mother warned her never to repeat it. When she left, the headmistress asked me if I was the only one beaten. ”
Understanding the problem
According to Save the Children, an international non-governmental organisation, Child Abuse is an act, or failure to act, on the part of a parent, guardian and / or caregiver that results in the death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation of a child, or which places the child in an imminent risk of serious harm, and / or seriously impacts the child’s long-term development and potential.
In Nigeria, like Shittu, a number of children are victims of physical and emotional abuse as they endure violence. Violence, according to United Nations Children’s Funds (UNICEF), occurs in many settings, including the home, school, community and over the Internet. Similarly, a wide range of perpetrators commit violence against children, such as family members, intimate partners, teachers, neighbours, strangers and other children. Such violence, it said, not only inflicts harm, pain and humiliation on children; it also kills.
More teachers assault pupils
Recently, a viral video of a three-year-old pupil, who was slapped several times by one Stella Nwadigo, a teacher at Christ-Mitots School in the Ikorodu area of Lagos, sparked outrage on social media.
Nwadigo had hit the boy, a Nursery 1 pupil, repeatedly during her number-writing lessons.
“It is like this. Write. Write six for me. Write. Six. Six. Like this, six like this. Like this. .. Six. One. Sixty-one,” she said
Meanwhile, his mother, Adenike Okunlaya, in an interview with a national newspaper ( not Sunday Telegraph), disclosed that his ear had been affected.
“We had to take him to the Ikorodu General Hospital. The doctor said his ears had been affected. So, they directed us to a department in the hospital for a medical check-up of his ears.
“The ear-care department once we get back from the Ministry of Youths and Social Development.”
In August 2021, a 13-year-old student of Government Secondary School Kwali, Abuja, Yahaya Nuhu Aliyu, died after he was allegedly beaten by his teacher.
Aliyu was said to have been beaten for failing to do his assignment, even though he was reportedly ill.
Wasted by abuse
On November 30, 2021 Sylvester Oromoni reportedly died after nursing multiple internal injuries said to be sustained after he was beaten by fellow students at his boarding school in Dowen College Lagos.
Contrary to the claim by the school authorities reportedly that Oromoni was injured while playing football with schoolmates, his parents said five boys had barged into his room, beat him up in the presence of other students and fed him with a chemical for refusing to join a cult group.
At Deeper Life High School, Uyo, Don Davies Archibong, an 11-year-old pupil died after he was allegedly sexually abused.
Speaking in a video posted on Facebook by Deborah Okezie, his mother, she alleged that seniors habitually inserted their fingers and toes in her son’s anus, noting that he was frequently starved and beaten up by senior students.
“They said if he complained, he would be a dead man.They will remove his boxers and push their legs and hands into his anus, ” Okezie said.
Assignments as emotional torture
For a number of parents, assignments given by schools simply give them away as oppressors of children. Some parents shared with Sunday Telegraph how assignments could become an emotional abuse.
At Tendergrip Nursery and Primary School,Toyin Falade, a caterer, has a five-year-old son in Primary 1. She tells her story: “Just this week, my son came home with a prefix and suffix assignment. I was shocked because I was taught that in JSS 3 or SS1. But I got more shocked on discovering that he was not taught. He pleaded with me to do it because he would be beaten. I had to Google to refresh my memory to get the assignment done.”
Reacting, Bisi Ale, an accountant, said: ” Most times , I do my son’s assignment by myself . I have to take the homework to the office, downloaded it from the internet, printed it out, cut and pasted it before giving it to the child to take to school because he can’t do it. They are not what he could do. Nigerian schools and the regulators need to look into this.”
In a social media post by wife of broadcaster, Frank Edoho, Sandra, she wrote the school of her child: “Good morning. Please what is the idea of giving a student assignment when it is the parent that gets the work done? For instance, the cut and paste or DRAW assignment. A 3-year-old cannot obviously draw sense organs. So, how can he get it done without the parents drawing it for them? Yours Truly.”
Reacting, a public school teacher, Olu Aina, said: “The essence of assignment is to test their (pupils)knowledge on their own if truly knowledge was passed and something was gained in the class. On if it’s proper to give assignment that hasn’t been taught, it is actually proper to teach the students on how to make research and make them enthusiastic for the next class because it helps their residual knowledge
“A teacher would have given them some background information on the assignment before giving the pupil. A lot of them aren’t teachers by training. They just happen to be a teacher by stomach.”
How to know when a child is being abused -Psychology Professor
On the signs to look out for when a child is being abused physically and psychologically, a Psychology Professor at the Adekunle Ajasin University, Bolanle Ogungbamila, explained: “We look at the physical / physiological signs. We also look out for the psychological signs. First, what are the physical/physiological signs? There will be some level of bruises, cuts, injuries and so on and so forth,which may be on the body of the child. There would be some wounds that may be untreated sometimes, and such wounds may be repeated; they may be constant. So, the parents have to look out for all those ones. Apart from the physical signs,which may also include running away from adults, the child may be fearful immediately when they see an adult.
“Other psychological signs include sleep disturbance. The child may have problems with sleeping at the appropriate time. It may also involve some level of nightmare. It may also involve bedwetting. The child will also come down with emotional problems, which may include unnecessary anxiety. The child may be struggling with his or her educational life. They may be having difficulty in understanding concepts, educational materials. Some of those things the child used to understand, they may find it difficult to understand. These are signs that parents and guardians look out for.”
Speaking on factors that could trigger child abuse and its consequences, he noted: “Abuse has a lot of conseqeunces for the victims. We also look at the perpetrators. Why would someone in their right mind abuse a child ? It may be because the person is also going through a traumatic experience and they are just transferring the aggression to the child. For instance, a teacher who is struggling with her emotional problems and comes across a child having some learning difficulty may react aggressively instead of understanding the peculiarity of the child. Then, there is this issue of inappropriate learning skills concerning handling of a child. If you don’t know how to handle a child, even as a parent, you may end up abusing the child. It may not be intentional but because it has the potential of bringing harm to the child, whether physically or psychologically, it is regarded as abuse.”
He added that there was a need for caregivers, teachers and parents to be trained to curb child abuse.
“In guarding against it, we have to look at preventive measures and also treatment modalities. So, there should be education in that area where people are provided with enough knowledge. There should also be a training of caregivers, maybe those handling children in pre-nursery, nursery, primary, even secondary School. There is also a need to look at how to treat child abuse.”
On handling the post abuse process , he said: “First, we should focus on the medical aspect, where we treat injuries. And then we move to the psychological aspect, where specific therapy must be given that will take the child off Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and bring back emotional stability. The person handling the post abuse process must listen attentively to the child and look out for signs of withdrawal. Most of the children that have been abused tend to withdraw from others. They may also be unnecessarily aggressive against others. They may put forth inappropriate sexual behaviour or sexual knowledge if the person has gone through sexual abuse. So, all those things have to be documented. And then, specific treatment modalities must be instituted to be able to address specific signs, symptoms and progression.”
‘Positive reinforcement needed, beating won’t produce enduring result’
According to Ogungbamila, while beating may engender appropriate behaviour when applied rightly, positive reinforcement is a far better option.
“Beating is a punishment. Yes, punishment may take someone from inappropriate behaviour and push the person in the direction of appropriate behaviour if it is used professionally and appropriately. But in most cases, they are not used appropriately. And then, the intensity of the beating, which may negate the ultimate aim of the beating. For me, I don’t usually support beating per se as a way of learning because we can use positive reinforcement. What do I mean by that?
“When a child moves in the direction of appropriate behaviour, you reinforce it. Reinforcement may not be in the form of money or food or whatever. Even clapping or nodding is a form of positive reinforcement. You must understand that our level of brain functioning and absorption are different. Some children may be fast learners, some may be slow learners .”
For his part, educationist, Dr Peter Ogudoro, said while it is not impossible to get anyone, not just children to be obedient through beating, it does not produce enduring results.
“What you want to achieve with anyone, not just children, is to get them to understand the value in what you want them to learn and adopt those habits and attitudes in ways that are repeatable but if you beat them to submission, they will do what you want them to do but when you are not watching, they drop the habit and look the other way. As a practitioner of attitude change, I know that beating is not a way to get people to acquire positive attitudes. I have children; I have two adults, and they have been winning awards right from kindergarten up till now that they are operating in the advanced societies.
“The truth I know is that I’ve never for once, since they were born, raised a finger on any of them. And they have been winning awards in morals and academics. I didn’t use cane, beating and abuse to get my children to behave properly. I used modelling. Anything I wanted to do… If I want them to read, they see their dad read, they see their mum read. We don’t need to preach it. ”
Our Faculties of Education not training teachers well – Peter Ogudoro
One of the major reasons abuse of children persists, Ogudoro argues, is that teachers and the school leaders hardly get the right training.
“Most of them may have the title teacher, but they have not actually been trained even when they have the licence. Our Faculties of Education are not training teachers well. Most of the professors, who train in our universities are not fortunate to visit places where the proper way to teach is being taught. For example, the Scandinavian region. That’s where you learn to teach in the world we live in now. Not even in those societies we like to go most times.
“When I say Scandinavian region, Finland is number one. Sweden is in that region. Norway is doing well. Denmark is doing well. Send your teachers there. Send your school leaders there. When they come back here, they will transform the education sector.”
The question of abuse of children is a systemic challenge, he said, noting that one stakeholder cannot take the whole blame.
“It is a systemic challenge. It’s not just one stakeholder that should take all the blame. It is a complex and complicated matter. Our natural tendency is to blame the parents or the teachers or the students in the case of bullying fellow students. But the truth of the matter is that teachers who don’t do the right thing, who administer corporal punishment in an attempt to extract good conduct and good academic performance from the students, what we know from research and those of us, who do education research is that, unfortunately for us, we have put our teachers under enormous pressure to make children deliver much more than they have the capacity to deliver.
“For example, the Ikorodu case involving the boy at Stella, what you find is a sorry situation where society puts parents in an environment where they are indulging in social comparison. They want their children to be as competent as other children in their neighbourhoods. And then, parents give testimonies in their church about their children writing at age two, three. They give testimonies about their children scoring 330 in JAMB/UTME. When they go to PTA meetings, especially in the private school sector, parents want to hear that in the last NECO, WAEC exams, all the 100 candidates they presented for the exams finished with distinctions in all the subjects that matter. Those are the things that parents are asking for from the school system and the school owners know that this is what markets the school, that type of academic attainment. And they put their teachers under pressure to deliver at that level. The teacher under such pressure and with that unrealistic expectation, go all out to learn what they don’t have the capacity to learn. We know that the brain develops at a certain pace. ”
He further stated: “When you tell a child who is age three to become numerate, or to know how to write a letter, you are making an unrealistic demand from the child. At that age, the child is not supposed to have anything to even do with a place called school in the real sense of the word. If the child is taken to kindergarten, the child is supposed to play, explore and make mistakes under the watchful eye of childminders, who are not necessarily called teachers because in the right environment, children are supposed to exercise different parts of their bodies and train in ways that will give them the ability to exercise their muscles well. But we live in a society where the school has been constructed as a place where all you come there to do is to learn how to read and write and to make an A at every level of public examination, which is a very unfortunate place to be as a society.”
Ogudoro added that the economic challenges bedevilling the country could not be divorced from the issues that bring about abuse of children.
“We haven’t trained teachers to know that they are asking for too much from their students. And parents are making unrealistic demands from school systems. The father leaves home at 5:00 am in search of food for the family, comes home at 10:00 pm. The mother leaves home at 6:00 am, comes home at 8:00 pm. The child is dropped in school; teachers are expected to be miracle workers, who have to make the child learn what they don’t have capacity to learn because parents are not true to their jobs. But you can’t completely blame parents for both of them going out every day to look for what to eat. We also know that life has become very difficult in Nigeria. With all the current economic policies that make transportation difficult, that make hunger something that people protest to get the government to address.”
There’s need to learn psychology of development – NAPTAN
Commenting, the Secretary General of National Parent-Teacher Association of Nigeria(NAPTAN), Ibrahim Yau Nabayi, decried the practice of enrolling children not ripe for school.
“We are more worried than any other person you can think of. We know the pains of bearing a child and raising a child, especially with this excessive hardship we are facing in the country. The immediate past education minister came up with a policy or wanted to insist on the application of that policy, that before you are admitted into a school, there is an age limit, and people are using the western method of schooling as a standard in Nigeria. I remember the day I was about to be admitted in Primary 1. My left hand, I would have to cross it over to the other side of my head to make sure it touched my right ear before I was admitted to Primary 1.
“Now, what’s the minimum set for a child to be admitted into a school? People should learn the psychology of development. People shouldn’t run faster their shadows. There shouldn’t be any need for a rush. We are calling on the government to enforce the legislation that places age limits for admission into certain classes.”
Only fake schools don’t beat, it’s compulsory, biblical – Cleric
For Pastor Michael Ayotunde Somoye of the Miracle Treasures of Heaven Bible Church, Ayobo, Lagos , beating a child is compulsory to instill discipline, noting that it is biblical.
“There are so many ways of beating a child. You beat in love. Not in hatred. When you beat in hatred, you are not inculcating discipline that the child needs. If you don’t use the cane, you will destroy the child. The appearance of the cane alone brings discipline. When there is a cane in the house, there is discipline in that house. When you lose the cane, you lose the discipline. A child not beaten by the parents will beat the parents at last. If you say they should not use a cane on your child, you have destroyed that child. Beating a child is compulsory. Teachers must use cane cane in love. Any school without a cane is no school.”
Citing Bible verses to buttress his claims, he stated:” Prov 13:24; 19:18; 23:13-14;29:15 and 17; Heb. 12:7.”
Another cleric, John Emmanuel, said “correction must be done in love even if the cane is used.”
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