RATHER than seeing themselves as parents to their pupils and seeking to mould them into knowledgeable, disciplined and responsible adults, some teachers tend to treat their pupils and students like slaves on a plantation. Such teachers, who act like terrorists, make school life extremely harsh for the young, impressionable students put in their care, and earn for themselves a large place in the hall of infamy. Such, evidently, is the case of one Faith Nwonye, a 30-year-old teacher at Landmark School, Mgbakwu, in Awka North Local Government Area of Anambra State, who was arrested last week for allegedly beating an eight-year-old pupil into coma. The state Commissioner for Education, Professor Ngozi Chuma-Udeh, who disclosed this while briefing journalists in her office on Monday, May 20, said that the school had been permanently shut down. Chuma-Udeh said she had summoned the school’s proprietress and Nwonye to explain the incident that led to the brutal beating of the pupil, and handed the matter over to the police for further investigations. During a meeting with the commissioner along with the proprietress of the school, Mrs Promise Ilo, the teacher reportedly admitted flogging the child, but claimed that the flogging was not as severe as reported. The photos of the child on his hospital bed were extremely gory, though.
Said the commissioner: “Any parent who is enrolling his or her child in an illegal school is doing so at their own peril. To the proprietors of private schools, anyone running an unapproved school in Anambra is a criminal. It’s a criminal offence to run an illegal school in the state. Whether the school is legal or not, it’s criminal to beat a child. According to the doctor, the chance of survival of the child is 20 percent. As soon as the police are done, the teacher will face other institutions on children’s rights. She is going to have the full wrath of the law brought upon her over her actions. Anambra State abhors violence to children, women and any other person. It’s not part of this administration and Mr. Governor is against such.” Sadly, the brutalised pupil died in the early hours of Wednesday, May 22. Expressing sadness over the development, the commissioner wrote on her Facebook page: “He was a boy like any other, with hopes and aspirations. He went to school for a better future but met a gruesome death at the hands of the people who were supposed to help him achieve his life ambition. A quack teacher in an illegal school bludgeoned him to death. We mourn a life nipped in the bud! We mourn Henry Chukwuemeka Okonkwo! We mourn and we seek justice.”
To be sure, discipline is an integral part of education at any level, but it must be imparted with moderation, and with the sole aim of promoting attitudinal change and reform. It surely has nothing to do with causing a child bodily harm and psychological trauma, which is sheer torture. While we recognise the fact that sparing the rod can spoil the child, we believe that there is no corrective measure in instilling fear and inflicting bodily harm in the bid to sanction children for alleged misdemeanor or bad conduct. It is hard to imagine that a teacher, any teacher, would brutalise a child, let alone to the extent that the victim would need to be rushed to the intensive care unit of a hospital, as it reportedly happened in this case. In all probability, the teacher in question is a mother herself, and it is distressing that her maternal consciousness vanished while she descended on the poor little boy for whatever reason she had conjured. Even if it turns out that she is no mother, it will still be hard to grapple with the thought that she exhibited so much anger towards a minor, and one put in her care for knowledge and instruction.
What did the suspect hope to gain by being so hostile to a child? Surely, by acting in such a cruel manner towards the deceased, she put the other children in her care under severe stress, creating a climate of terror where there should have been care, patience and understanding. After all, the poor little children could not have been responsible for whatever underlying frustrations triggered her action and, as we have pointed out time and again, murderous acts are not justified under any guise. Evidently, beating a pupil to coma could not have been for corrective purposes, since the child had to be alive to be able to change and imbibe the correction. This suggests that the teacher was either out of her mind or was on a different mission. Whatever the case, it should be clear that the teacher was not within acceptable bounds here and ought to be treated as such. There is of course the added responsibility of ensuring that such kinds of persons are not permitted to function as teachers or be saddled with overseeing children and young ones. We expect the authorities to treat the case with all the firmness required to ensure justice and the learning of appropriate lessons.
We note that according to the Anambra State government, the school where Nwonye taught until the dastardly incident is an illegal outfit, which raises the question of how it was able to operate until the recent shutdown. Surely, the owner of the school committed a serious criminal offence by running an unapproved school and should face the consequences of flouting the law along with her errant teacher, but the regulatory authorities, who had the duty of shutting it down before now, also have a case to answer. Incidents such as the one under reference can happen anywhere in the face of indiscipline and the breakdown of law and order, and the Anambra State government has a bounden duty to ensure that the present case is used to send strong messages of deterrence.
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