Apparently because of the dramatic happenings in the political space, the flogging to death of a school boy in Zaria, Kaduna State, has been largely ignored by the public. But cruelty shown by teachers to students in our schools has become more rampant in recent times and ought not to be ignored.

I had a personal experience which I wrote about some years ago when a teacher spilled my son’s blood in the pretext of disciplining him. I wanted to also discipline him by hiring thugs to spill his own blood but I changed my mind when the school authorities tendered an apology to me.

In the Zaria case I mentioned earlier, a 19-year-old student of Alazhar Academy, Marwanu Nuhu-Sambo, was on October 20 flogged multiple times until he died. According to the story published by The Nation newspaper, this JSS 3 student was accused of being absent from school.

According to his sister, Rukayya, the boy had said he was not returning to the school because he had failed his promotion examination and did not want to repeat the class. His uncle persuaded him and took him to the school and handed him over to the principal. After the uncle’s departure from the school, the school principal ordered that he should be given 100 strokes of the cane. He was also flogged at the assembly hall with other students present as witnesses to wickedness.

The boy was returned to the principal’s office for another round of thrashing. He tried to escape but was prevented from doing so by some of the prefects. He reportedly lost his teeth and went into a coma too. According to the story, they dumped him near the school toilet instead of rushing him to the hospital for treatment.

When they realised their folly, they rushed him to a nearby hospital by which time the poor boy had died. This is wickedness personified. This is cruelty amplified. This is barbarity magnified. This is a school for the efficient teaching of bestiality. How could any teacher, any parent, any human being, do this to another person, another human being, in the name of discipline?

We hear that the Kaduna State Government has shut down the school. Good. We hear also that the police are investigating the matter. Good. The public is interested in a speedy investigation and a prompt decision that can assuage the feelings of an angry public. School teachers are supposed to be alternative parents to the children put under their charge. If this boy was their son, would they keep flogging him until he died? They would not, because that would not amount to correcting the boy. It would just be a display of wickedness, pure and simple.

Corporal punishment has been frowned upon by the United Nations. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child which oversees the Convention on the Rights of the Child defines corporal punishment as “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light.”

A lot of research has been done on the adverse effects of corporal punishment on education and children. John Locke, an English philosopher who wrote a book titled “Some Thoughts Concerning Education” explicitly criticised the central role of corporal punishment in education. It is believed that it is his work that influenced lawmakers in Poland to ban corporal punishment in Polish schools in 1783, the first country in the world to do so.

In the book of Proverbs, corporal punishment is highly recommended. In Proverbs 13:24 it is stated that: “He that spareth the rod, hateth his son but he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes.” There is a justification for using the rod on children in Proverbs 22:15. It says: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child but the rod of correction shall drive it from him.” But in the modern era, such punishment is unacceptable.

Human rights groups have condemned corporal punishment as punishment only fit for slaves and that it is an inhuman and degrading treatment. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) approved by the United Nations says in Article 7 that: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In 2006 the Committee on the Rights of the Child overseeing its implementation said that there is an obligation on all States Party to move quickly to prohibit and eliminate all corporate punishment.”

Besides, there is considerable research that has proved that the disadvantages of corporate punishment far outweigh whatever benefits, if any, it is supposed to have on a child. The harmful effects of corporal punishment are listed by experts as pain, sadness, fear, anger, shame, guilt, hopelessness, low self-esteem, self-harm, hostility, damage to education, including refusal or reluctance to go to school, low academic success and increased anti-social behaviour.

It is perhaps these adverse effects of corporal punishment as proffered by experts that have made many countries to ban it in their schools. School teachers and administrators are banned from flogging students in such countries as Canada, New Zealand and all of Europe. In Africa the following countries have taken the civilized step of stopping the barbaric treatment of students in their schools: Togo, Tunisia, Kenya, Republic of Congo, Benin, South Africa, Guinea and Zambia.

This cruelty by school teachers and administrators starts ostensibly from home. In homes, where parents use corporal punishment on their young children, they are likely, if they are teachers, to transfer that cruelty to schools if there is nothing to restrain them from doing so.

Corporal punishment in the home has been banned as at 2021 by 63 countries, especially in Europe and Latin America. That is also why these countries have not been afflicted by the menace of corporal punishment in their schools. In many of these countries the rights of children and students are largely protected by the medical and human rights community because of the health and psychological implications of such harsh punishment on their young population.

In Nigeria, there is hardly any credible response by such groups. Our medical and human rights personnel tend to worry more about their workplace bread and butter issues or political agenda that affect them.

Education in Nigeria has gone down in quality largely because of neglect by the various governments and organisations that have a relationship with education. The funding for education is low, the facilities and equipment are poor and the teachers not trained and retrained to meet the dynamic nature of knowledge today. And with the high level of unemployment and poverty in the country, as well as the insecurity that is prevalent everywhere, we now have the misfortune of having millions of out- of -school children who may in the near future become a danger to the society, a society that is already very severely harassed by an assortment of criminals.

When my son’s blood was spilled by a cruel teacher in the primary school, he was attending it took a lot of persuasion for him to agree to go back to school. That is what happens to children who have been cruelly flogged in school. They find it difficult to go back to face such wicked teachers in those schools.

Children have to be motivated to want to go to school. Children who are badly treated in school lose the motivation to go there. That is the effect that corporal punishment has on education. And if that happens, then the number of out- of -school children is bound to increase. And so will the number of destitute, criminals, thugs and vagabonds.

The killing episode in the Zaria secondary school is the limit, the upper limit of what can be acceptable in any institution of learning or in any civilised society. This incident has come to the fore largely because the boy died. In many of our schools, corporal punishment is freely and routinely used on a daily basis. If the child doesn’t tell the parents or if the parents do not show interest in how the child is treated in school, then the matter ends there. In that case, the school continues to dish out cruelty to the students in the name of discipline. And some of the students quietly stay away from school and pose a problem to the parents at home.

Education is on the concurrent list in our Constitution. That means that both the State Houses of Assembly and the National Assembly can legislate on it. In order for it to have effect that is far reaching, I wish to suggest that the National Assembly enacts a law against the use of corporate punishment in schools.

The State Governments can then domesticate such laws in their jurisdictions. If the National Assembly takes that action, it will be striking a major blow for education in Nigeria.