Nigerians who watched a recent viral video of senior male students punishing a group of junior students were shocked to their marrows.
The junior students were whipped with various sizes of sticks, leather belts and punched in the most inhumane manner. One of the victims was even punished stark naked.
It was such a dehumanising experience that prompted the Edo State government to issue a strong statement, signed by no less a person than the Secretary to the State Government – a clear indication that the government was deeply appalled by what happened, and it took appropriate steps to initiate justice for the victims. The Edo State government deserves a ringing commendation for the forthright steps it took over that horrendous incident.
It goes without saying that the incidence of bullying is again rising in most secondary schools in the country, except in a few schools where the authorities in such schools are very vigilant and had put in place mechanisms for dealing squarely with the faintest exhibitions of bullying. Schools are established for the purpose of educating children intellectually and morally. As with every setting where there is an assemblage of young people such as a school, and particularly those with boarding facilities, intimidation of junior students by the senior ones or even stronger students against their weaker classmates is a given tendency that manifests in the course of interaction between the students.
Incidentally, the menace called bullying is not associated with only boys in schools. Female secondary students are even worse. Bullying happens in private, public and missionary schools, as long as you have teenagers from different backgrounds in the same school.
It goes without saying that bullying negatively affects the psyche of the victim and produces character traits that can be injurious to the larger society as the menace leads the victims becoming hardened and lose some sense of humanity. This breeds a quest to revenge when in higher classes and similarly bully the junior ones. A relatively innocent junior student in JSS 2 who is bullied could develop phobia for living in a boarding house, which should have been a valuable character formation experience that comes from communal living and shared beneficial exposure.
It is gratifying to note that effective school authorities are not sleeping on their oars or pampering the menace. Such school authorities are effectively wielding the stick of punishment, even to the extent of de-boarding notorious student bullies. That is the way to go because bullying leaves bitter taste, serious psychological and physical injuries.
One germane question is this: why do senior students bully the junior ones? I encountered a student, Favour Ngwangwa, who lives in my neighbourhood and asked him the question posed in this paragraph.
Responding, he said: “I attended a missionary school in the East. The first reason we bullied junior students during our time was because we were seriously bullied as junior students.”
Removing his shirt, he showed me scars from strokes of canes used to flog him. Then said further: “Bullying is not a new thing in schools, and it did not start today; it has become a generational thing like passing on the torch. The ones who bullied us were also bullied by their seniors and it has become a vicious circle of evil which quietly crept into the institutions. It has seen decades before it got to us, because no one can trace the history of bullying. It is as old as the school boarding system. Most of our parents can also give a comprehensive testimony to school bullying which they experienced in one way or the other.”
Notably, the menace could be likened to cultism in the universities, which started small and then grew to become the evil it is today. It has done great damage to the social fabric of universities and the larger society. According to Ngwangwa, it will take stiff measures by the government in collaboration with school authorities to stamp out bullying.
Granted there is need for senior students to maintain discipline in schools, however, there is no justification for the senior students to descend on junior students and unleash animalistic treatment on them as if they are common criminals. There is simply no justification for it. Often times, it done to prove superiority and feed their ego.
Another ex-student told me: “Our seniors did very inhuman things to us. They used wire as well as chains meant to lock chairs to tables in classes and sticks with nails to flog us, for doing nothing.” Why did you not report to the school authority, I asked him? “If you report and the senior is probably expelled or de-boarded, his classmates would take it upon themselves to deal with you in turns. It is that fear, intimidation and pressure that made us keep sealed lips and wallow in pain until our bruised body heals. That was what we passed down to the junior students and from them to their own juniors.”
The other face of bullying is when a senior decides to extort from a junior student and he proves stubborn (in the opinion of the senior student). It happens like this: a senior student could call a junior one and ask him or her to supply snacks like four sausages (Gala or the like) and a bottle of soft drink without giving money to the junior student. The senior could even ask the junior to buy food of a certain amount. The junior student would be the one to figure out how meet the senior’s request, even if it means stealing from his classmates, as far as the senior is satisfied, it is okay. If the junior student defaults, in the wee hours of the night, the senior would come in full force when there is no hiding place because the housemaster and other school authorities would have gone to rest too. Except the case is reported by a bold junior student, no one would hear about the midnight drill as it would die in the ears and eyes of other student spectators who saw or heard anything. When the boy is dragged to the senior’s dormitory, same senior and his mates would bring out chain, horsewhip, stick with nails and ask the defaulting junior to choose which one he wants to be flogged with. And indeed, he will get the flogging and beating of his life for just no reason. Most of them sustain horrible injuries from senior students.
Senior students who see themselves as lord and master do not like to share the corridors, walkways, staircases or even the field with the junior ones. Juniors must step down for them or get an instant slap for rubbing shoulders with them. Some students make life difficult for others in the name of seniority.
There have also been instances where blood relations aided their classmates to bully their junior relation in the same school. Take the case of Boma Adolphus, a senior cousin to Pere Wilcox., who mobilised his classmates to bully his junior cousin because he refused to be extorted by him.
Winifred James, who is rounding off her university education, also attended a mixed-secondary school. Recalling how senior students dealt with her in school, she said: “While I was in SS1, the head boy of the school admired me seriously and wanted me to be his girlfriend. He would send me gifts to entice me further; any opportunity he had, he would come around my class to talk to me. Most of his peers knew about his quest to get close. I had not really given him my consent, but when he comes around my class, I would step out to see him. Meanwhile, I did not know that his class girls who were also my seniors were already angry and compiling my case file. In the course of a short argument in the dormitory, eight girls descended on me with mop-stick, hard-rubber slipper and the legs of broken plastic chair. It was a free for all fight; I targeted one and bit her fingers. Red hot blood splattered our dormitory that evening. Our matrons ran in to rescue me. The case went to the school authority and all the senior girls were suspended from the dormitory. On resumption, their parents were made to sign an undertaking to be of good conduct. As the case trended in school that week, some students blamed me for getting a boyfriend in a senior class, not to talk of a head boy when the food had not gone round among the senior girls.”
Girls are not bold enough to extort from the junior students, but the want complete respect, their seniority recognised, intact and protected. There is nothing wrong if a senior asks a junior to wash his or her shirt, sweep the corner, or at most to kneel down as punishment, but the amount of beating that goes on is unconscionable.
Again, bullying could be executed this way: the parents of junior student visit him in school. All the goodies they brought for him could be snatched from the young child immediately, leaving him empty handed.
Dear Nigerians, time has come for school authorities to sit up, be more vigilant to protect the junior ones. Once a child is handed over to the school as a boarder, the authorities of the school from the principal down to the gateman have a duty of care to ensure the safety of that child. Under the law, they could be held vicariously responsible for negligent conduct which could be ascertained to have remotely led to grievous bodily harm to child in the boarding house. This perhaps is the reason some schools have seen the wisdom in installing CCTV cameras in certain parts of the school premises for security and other reasons. When senior students with a tendency to engage in bullying realise that their perfidious conduct could be captured on camera as evidence, they will begin to hold their ‘demons’ in check. Dormitories could be searched or rearranged unexpectedly by eagled-eye security staff.