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The boy was excited. And so were his parents. Therefore, they sent him off to school in Lagos, all the way from Delta State, full of hope.
Nobody can tell how they heard about Dowen College. It is certain though that they believed it was a doyen of education, a place where knowledge is acquired.
However, it was not so for Sylvester Oromoni and his parents. He ended up in a body bag, parcelled to his teary parents. Yes, instead of receiving their son back garlanded with knowledge, the parents, in hapless distress, got a body bag instead.
It is not yet clear how 12-year-old Sylvester died. The parents said he was bullied to death, beaten by some students that wanted him to join their cult group. The school says no, he sustained injury playing football. The police are currently trying to unravel the truth.
However, Sylvester is gone untimely, in heart-rending circumstances. I could see the bright future etched on his shining eyes in the picture gone viral. I could see the hope and glee too, as he clung to his luggage ready to take on the world; then the last haunting images of a youngster in agony, fighting hard to stay alive.
Sadly, he lost the battle before the bugle blew. He lost before he could even test the battle, not because he was unwilling but because he was ambushed by the vagaries of acquiring education in Nigeria, an otherwise enjoyable activity that has become arduous due to the festering influence of cultism, a monster that has crept into our school system and is fast eroding the value of education.
Cultism is no longer an affliction of the tertiary institutions but has also got a hold on secondary schools, turning little children into vicious demons.
The matter is no longer about Dowen College or Sylvester; it is about the entire gamut of our education system. It is about the government, the school management, the parents, the students, and the society. It is about how Nigeria kills its own by inept acts.
The government has failed in its role, superintending education, just as it has in other spheres. The schools are now commercial centres, springing up here and there with three major objectives – to make money, to make money and to make more money. Besides this, every other thing is secondary. That is why the management closes its eyes to the deviant behaviour of some students. Because they don’t want to be seen as harsh lest they lose the students to more pliant neighbours.
Parents are about the worst contributors to this menace. Mostly looters on parade, they tend to suffocate their kids with ‘love’ and don’t want to deny them any good thing in life. So, they provide all the expensive gadgets and toys and make them feel superior, even to their teachers. They intimidate the teachers and hardly can tolerate report that a teacher shouted at their prized child and often demand that school management must sack such a teacher or they remove their child to a neighbouring school. Did we not read about a teacher that was forced to resign his appointment because an intimidated school management wanted him to apologise to parents of a child he tried to correct? Quite a shame! Has the society not raised hell when some Christian schools decide to enforce discipline and standards?
The students are intractable from home. The parents do not discipline them and, even if they want, they cannot because of new slants in child upbringing that forbids punishment. So, we end up with over-indulged children who arrive school with some uppity feeling that they are a law unto themselves because of their parents’ often ill gotten affluence and influence.
Yes, some parents and guardians go overboard when it comes to disciplining a child but these isolated cases cannot be used as a basis for raising uncontrollable children.
Now I hear lamentations on the streets of Nigeria. I hear the uproar and weeping because of the death of Sylvester. Yet we disappointed him alive when we failed to protect him.
Weep not for Sylvester. Weep for yourself, O failing nation, blighted by indecisive leaders and pretenders. Weep for yourselves, O unworthy parents that breed brats and unleash them on a prostrate society like rabbits. Weep for yourself O misguided society that elevates mediocrity and brings down honour. Weep for yourselves, O teachers, teaching nonsense. Who did this country offend; who did this to this us? Who can cleanse us of this mess?
Weep for yourself, you wasted generation of ‘mkpurummiri’ addicts sans a future. Stone yourselves and moon around like zombies, strangers to reality. Shamble on the coarse earth like a reed tossed about by nebulous wind and sleight of men. Poor, beguiled soul, you rejoice to your calamity that the government has removed the cane from the home and school so that you can grow haywire untamed.
Indeed, the government hates you because, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” Proverbs 13:24.
We are raising an unruly and overly dependent generation. We don’t want them to suffer what we suffered. So, we pamper them with needless attention that kneads them into hollow doughnuts. All they know is to browse and do drugs. Those things we passed through that we don’t want the children of today to pass through didn’t kill us; they made us what we are today. Why then do we feel they kill or mar our children?
We must recognise that every child is like a yam seedling. If the tendrils are not properly tied to the stake, they would amount to nothing. The good book says: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him”. (Proverbs 22:15). So, until we bring back the rod of correction, drive foolishness out our children and put them on the right track, we will continue to bury our Sylvesters, which is an abomination.
The country is paying a great price by its crazy child rights addiction. Parents are not showing good examples to their children either. Many are into occultism and the observant children sooner follow suit. Some homes are a war zone where fathers and mothers and siblings intimidate one another to get what they want. Why then are we surprised when our ‘stronger’ children intimidate the ‘weaker’ ones in schools and workplaces?
Is our political landscape worth beholding by sane people much less children? The hooligans we purportedly enthrone to lead us, can they in good conscience, justifiably call their children to order. In any case, they know how to preserve their own children and unleash less privileged children as urchins to pester opponents. Whose child must be recruited?
It is time this country did something holistic about cultism, whether in school or elsewhere. Nigeria has brought home ant-infested firewood; so the lizards are congregating for a feast. We need to take a holistic view of our diseased circumstances and begin a process of healing. The ravaging violence in society today is a direct offshoot of one aspect of bullying or another – the Boko Haram insurgents, bandits, killer herdsmen and all such are bullies, muscling every other person out of existence.
So, we are all bullies, occupying a bullying space that must be contracted by drastic measures. Unless this is done, our Sylvesters will continue to return in body bags and this is not the will of God.
“There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfill.” Exodus 23:26.
Enough of recurrent meaningless condolence speeches! Let us vacuum the entire space immediately if we must avert similar tragedies like the one witnessed at Dowen College.
