The family of Aliya Olanrewaju, a Junior Secondary School student of Egba Comprehensive High School, Asero, Abeokuta, Ogun State, and her teachers are currently at loggerheads over alleged torture of the 12-year-old girl.
Aliya’s mother, Mrs. Kafayat Olarenwaju, alleged that three teachers in the school took turns in giving the girl several strokes of the cane, resulting in serious injuries and laceration of her back over an offence she did not commit.
She (Aliya) was tortured to the extent that she cried out that they should give her poison; that she wanted to die because the pain was too much. And one of the teachers said that she should get home before she would drink the poison and another one was saying, ‘Please help me check if she is still breathing’
She alleged that when her daughter could no longer bear the pains from the injuries inflicted on her with the teachers’ canes, she had to even ‘beg’ them to give her poison so that she could die and escape the unbearable torture.
The widow said, owing to the injuries inflicted on her by the teachers’ canes, she could not sleep throughout that night, in spite of the pain relief drugs she took before she went to bed.
And pained by her daughter’s alleged torture by her teachers, Aliya’s mother said she had to post pictures of her lacerated body on the social media, Facebook, to call the attention of Nigerians to the incident.
Narrating her daughter’s ordeal in the hands of her teachers, Mrs. Olarenwaju said, “She (Aliya) was tortured to the extent that she cried out that they should give her poison; that she wanted to die because the pain was too much. And one of the teachers said that she should get home before she would drink the poison and another one was saying, ‘Please help me check if she’s still breathing.’”
She said that her daughter had to lie against herself that she committed the offence before the teachers stopped beating her.
“They (the teachers) all beat her till she lied against herself that she committed the offence; that was when they stopped beating her. When she got home, I immediately took a picture of the cane injuries on her laps and bottom, which I posted on the Facebook for a friend of mine to see. Later, I went to buy her pain relief drugs, which cost me N500, because she was running high temperature and was unable to sleep at night,” she said.
The widow further accused the principal of the school of threatening to send her children away from the school for posting pictures of Aliya’s lacerated body on Facebook.
“The principal then said since the picture had gone viral on Facebook, the next thing for me was to take my children out of the school until the Ministry of Education intervened and asked the school authorities to take them back. She was three years old while her younger brother was one year old when their father died and since then, I have been the one catering for their education and their upkeep,” she said.
But what actually did Aliya do to deserve such an alleged “torture” from her teachers?
According to Aliya, the teachers, including the school’s Vice Principal, Mr. Bankole, inflicted the severe cane injuries on her body.
The 12-year-old said that she was beaten mercilessly by the teachers, namely: Mr. Shokeye and Mr. Onikani, as well as the vice principal of the junior school, for allegedly hanging onto a bus leaving the school premises before the closing hour.
Aliya, who lost her father at the age of three, said her Business Studies teacher, Mrs. Ajayi, mistook her for the student who actually hung onto the bus, and all her plea with the teacher that she was innocent of the offence, proved abortive.
The JSS 2 student explained that the teachers, at first, ordered three boys to carry her face down as they gave her strokes of the cane, non-stop, until she was forced to confess that she was the offender.
She said that the Business Studies teacher had already reported her to the principal, Mrs. Omotunde Adeneye, who directed that she should be given four strokes of the cane, which a student teacher did on her behalf.
Aliya said that, not satisfied, Mrs. Ajayi further reported her to the French and Mathematics teachers as well as the vice principal, who gave her additional strokes of the cane.
The student said, “When we closed from the school on that day after writing our mid-term test, a bus was moving out of our school premises and a boy hung onto it. Our teacher, Mrs. Ajayi, who teaches us Business Studies, saw us. The next day, some students and I were called out at the Assembly for defaulting in the payment of our school fees and PTA levy. But when Mrs. Ajayi saw me, she said that I was the student that was hanging onto the bus and I said I was not the one.
“The business teacher did not listen to my explanations; she took me to the principal’s office, and the principal asked her to give me four strokes of the cane, which another teacher did on her behalf. After that, she still went ahead to tell other teachers that I was the student who hung on the bus.
“She later went to other teachers and reported me to them. Then, Mr. Shokeye; our Vice Principal, Mr. Bankole, and a teacher asked some big boys to carry me and they all beat me mercilessly. I can’t count the number of the strokes of the cane that I was given. I am still feeling the pain of the cane on my back.”
When our correspondent visited the school at Asero, the Principal of the Junior School, Mrs. Adeneye Omotunde, said that Aliya’s mother lied, insisting that it was true her daughter hung onto the bus.
“It is a lie, her daughter hung onto the bus. I can’t say anything because the Ministry of Education is handling the case,” she said.
