•Says children who commit crime must experience judicial system and not exonerated
Justice must be done in the sense that if children commit crimes, they are not exonerated from the justice system just because they are children. They are called children in conflict with the law. The only thing is that they are not tried the way adults are tried but they experience the judicial system’.
There are lots of unresolved cases especially those involving deaths of students in Nigerian schools which have been forgotten without victims getting justice. It’s even more painful when culprits appear to be protected rather than prosecuted.
Some of these cases include that Ofa child who was asthmatic in a boarding school. He had an attack on a Sunday and the doctor who was busy somewhere, instructed the matron who was not a trained health personnel to administer an IV injection into the boy and he died immediately. The school is still running and the parents have given up fighting for justice.
In a school in Lagos, a child hit his head on a bunk while playing and instead of taking the child to a nearby hospital immediately, since he wasn’t given a first aid, there was delay and he bled to death. There was a corona enquiry which found the school guilty, yet, it’s in business like nothing happened. Eze Chidindu’sdeath is another heart-breaking case. He drowned in a pool during a school swimming exercise. Even when one of the students who was a good swimmer called for help when he found Chidindu struggling in the water, the guard was missing, and the boy died.
The death of 12-year-old Sylvester Oromoni jr, following his alleged torture by some senior students of Dowen College, Lekki, Lagos, will definitely be an exception. The public outcry; individuals, groups, organisations, celebrities etc, vowing to see to it that the poor child gets justice, is a pointer to fact that the matter can never be swept under the carpet irrespective of how highly placed in the society, the parents of the alleged bullies are.
Pained by the manner in which Sylvester’s young life was snuffed out of him, Taiwo Akinlami, a lawyer, has also lent his voice in demanding that anyone found culpable in the crime, be brought to justice.
Akinlami who is also a UNICEF adviser on Child Protection, Rights Enlightenment, Education Curriculum Development and Youth Training, revealed the unresolved cases of deaths in some Nigerian schools cited above, while discussing the late Sylvester’s death on Arise Television talk show. He was particular about the urgent roles governments, teachers and parents need to play to curb the incidence of bullying and violence in schools.
While commiserating with the family for the irreparable loss of their son, Akinlami said, “I feel the pain of the father who lost a child who would have become 12 before he was killed. I understand the pains of the parents who raised a child for twelve years and life is snuffed out of the child in a place that is supposed to be the safest place for him. They sent their son to receive education, not to receive death. That is condemnable, and it is important to note that, death of children within the school system is becoming a reoccurring decimal. In the last 15 years, I’ve taken time to study circumstances in which children have died in school. Beginning from Morenike Arologun who died in Faith Academy, 2008 under circumstances subjected to the court to interpret”.
Late Sylvester’s last painful moments is most heart-wrenching and just like many pundits, Akinlami wonders why no help came from anybody in the school before the boy’s condition got bad.
“I’ve found something very disturbing. Schools are not doing enough to ensure they put in place, a protective environment for children. Five boys came into the room, and began to beat the boy as the father has alleged, who was in charge of the school, where was the house master, where were the caregivers, were those children supposed to be left on their own? This means the school failed woefully in providing a secure environment for the children. Not only that, they also failed to intervene on time when that incident was taking place”. On the allegation of cover up against the school, he said; “We are in a nation of cover ups. It is in this country that people were killed at Lekki Toll Gate and till today the government is still telling us that nobody was killed. Even after their own panel that they set up found that people were killed.
“What the school has done is typical of how schools respond; look at a child who died in Abuja, the parents alleged that when the child was brought home, they found condom in her private part and the school denied that it never happened. Autopsy report revealed that it was true”.
Akinlami reasoned that even if Sylvester and other children were truly playing football (as the school claimed), which is their right, and the game was becoming violent, was there no one to intervene?.
“We now wonder, why do you run a school? Most of the people who run school, I think are more interested in protecting the name of their school than the welfare of the children. If you are a parent and a child dies in your school, the first thing is for you to come out and deny it?”, he questioned.
In the light of public outcry, Akinlami believes “the police will do thorough investigation. Justice must be done in the sense that if children commit crimes, they are not exonerated from the justice system just because they are children. They are called children in conflict with the law. The only thing is that they are not tried the way adults are tried but they experience the judicial system”.
He further insisted that “these children must tell their own side of the story. Its not easy for life to be snuffed out of someone. When you subject someone to a type of treatment that brings him to a point where his liver got swollen, his mouth was battered as if it was the substance that he drank that messed up his mouth, then, someone must be answering questions”.
In this case, it’s not only the suspects that should be interrogated but everyone under whose care the boy was before his demise.
“Those who should also be answering questions are the people under whose care the child was at the time that thing happened. Because when you drop a child in a school, the school has a duty of care to protect him. When something happens in the school system, and you are not there to prevent it, you become an accomplice in the matter”.
Boldly, he calls out the culprits. “In this case, the culprits here are, the people who perpetrated the act, the people who had the duty of care to protect him, as a matter of fact, they have responsibility; they have case, many cases to answer as to how the child under their care was brutalised, beaten and dehumanised and killed. The school is an accessory before the fact and an accessory after the fact because they are trying to deny the fact”.
He goes further to blame the State, particularly its inspectorate division, for neglecting its role and for failing to maintain standards.
“There are four wings of protection; family, community, state. The state plays two roles in the educational sector in Nigeria. They run their own schools and also provide regulatory oversight over schools. In both instances, the state has failed woefully.
“For instance, in Lagos state we have 1,900 public schools competing with over 18,000 private schools. And when you are not able to do well in the role of providing education, what is the assurance that you are going to do well in your role of regulating education;so, they’ve failed woefully.
“13.5 million children are out of school. They failed woefully in proving education which is one of their roles. Go to their schools, the way they look, you see gory pictures of children learning under bizarre circumstances”.
He further emphasised that “Lagos state is a culprit in this case; the school is a culprit and the parents are even culprits because if you send your child to school, look at Sylvester’s story, the child has been complaining, ‘this is what they did to me, daddy I don’t feel like going to school. I’m sad that I’m going to school’.
“Those were red flags to the fact that the child was not having the best or experience in that school. At the end of the day we still sent him to the school and he met his death. As parents, when you send your child to school, do you ask whether they have a child protection policy?”
Akinlami also accused schools of adopting British curriculum without adopting the child protection policy which is not toiled with by the British. “You bring us British curriculum, but you don’t run a system that protects children. Where you borrowed that curriculum from, do they run their schools without policies that protect children that is reviewed from time to time?”
Still bearing the litany of unresolved cases involving death of pupils in school in his mind, Akinlami fears that same thing might happen in Sylvester’s case. “What will happen is that we are going to make noise, few months down the line, its going to stop trending one way or the other. Dowen College will go and sort out itself, then reopen. If you have said you are setting up commission of enquiry, what is the work of the commission of enquiry?
“Here government schools are not regulated, no child protection policy. I challenge anybody to show me, even schools that are collecting 6-figure school fees should show us their Child Protection system, codified into policies, broken down into processes on which everybody is trained; which means everybody knows what to do”.
