In boarding schools, students do not only attend classes together. They eat and live in the same house. Most times, they are only separated when they all go home to their parents or guardians during holidays.
The social media was however agog last year following the reports on Sylvester Oromoni, a 12-year-old boy who passed away while nursing multiple internal injuries.
He allegedly sustained the injury after he was beaten by his fellow students for declining to join what he termed as the secondary school’s “cult group” at Dowen College in Lekki, Lagos.
The deceased’s parents also claimed that their son was fed a liquid substance described as a chemical for refusing to join the “cult group.”
Like Oromoni, the story of 14-year-old Karen-Happuch Aondodoo Akpagher of Premier Academy, Lugbe, Abuja. She was s3xually assaulted and later died of complications as a result of a condom left in her private part.
Her mother said Premier Academy, which she entrusted to her daughter, did nothing to help her, rather they shielded a suspected pedophile and later embarked on a media stunt to save their face.
The hospital where the victim died on June 22, 2021 found out that she was raped repeatedly and a condom was left in her vagina, leading to infection that caused sepsis.
Narrating his experience, a Twitter, said the “worst things” happened during his days as a boarding school student.
“In 2013 during our founders day celebration, some old students came to our hostel in Federal Government College, Okigwe. One of the guys pointed to a locker where a senior student locked a junior student before going on long vacation.
“The skeleton of the boy was found after a long break. One said his classmate in 1993 is still a cripple because he fell from a locker when being punished by a senior. A lot has happened, we are lucky we have social media now.”
Adeyinka Odutoyo, a journalist also shared his experience, saying “this Dowen business really just takes me back to my days in Lagos State Model College, Badore. You see, the truth is, the seniors who bully students are just as bad as the teachers.
“In Badore, you just had to learn to live and embrace the lesser evil. The Boarding School system does more evil than good, and you just begin to imagine how kids who should be young at heart are really just vile and evil.”
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The Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA), however, notes that the authorities’ silence on statutory responsibility to all school children, to keep them safe, is equated to abdication of their duty.
A boarding school teacher who spoke under anonymity because she was not authorized to speak said “the teachers can only try. The problem sometimes comes from the parents, especially children of the rich who were already spoilt before sending them to boarding schools to remodel their lives.”
A psychologist, F. Rivara said in his 2016 thesis that the individual who is bullied often ends up as a bully if he or she survives it.
“Being bullied makes young people incredibly insecure. When you’re being bullied, you can feel constantly insecure and on guard. It has a big mental and emotional impact—you feel unaccepted, isolated, angry, and withdrawn.
“The physical health consequences of bullying can be immediate, such as physical injury, or they can involve long-term effects, such as headaches, sleep disturbances, or somatization. Being a child or youth who is bullied changes behavior, and neuroscience research suggests this experience may also change the brain.”
