Sometime this week, we all became aware of yet another case of bullying in one of our elite schools when the video showing one Mariam slapping Namtira Bwala her fellow school mate (we don’t know for sure if she is her junior or senior) repeatedly in the presence of other students of both genders went viral on social media.
We haven’t been told what transpired before matters degenerated, but we do know from the incident that it was because of a relationship as Mariam repeatedly asked Namtira to name the boy who broke her heart.
The video has elicited several responses from Nigerians and high ranking government officials including the minister for women affairs. The school has been shut down and the jury is still out as to the outcome of the high powered team set up to investigate the remote and immediate causes of the incident.
I am bemused but not surprised by the reactions of Nigerians to the incident. I have heard people say bullying should not happen in such an expensive and elite private school and I wonder what suggests to us that children are going to behave differently just because they are in private schools ( by the way that shows how distorted our thinking that the rich behave better than the poor is). Our puerile thinking that children act differently just because of the kind of schools they attend, reminds me of an astute statement my son made when he was 12 years old that parents take their bad children to good “Christian schools” in a bid to reform them in response to his friends statement that his new Christian school was a scam.
I have also heard parents berating the school for allowing the incident to occur and I agree with them to a degree. Schools should be safe environments for every child and they should have zero bullying policies in place and strictly enforced to ensure that bullying is minimised. I say minimised because human beings being what we are, cannot be totally eradicated and that’s because in a way it’s a rite of passage that we all go through. But the truth is that there is a limit to what a school can do. Our children are ours to train and shape, and the schools are there to reinforce what we have started and not to completely take over our work.
I have heard parents berating the child for not standing up to her aggressors and in turn her parents for bringing up a child that is too placid and gentle, forgetting that, that child could have taken all those slaps because she knew that to fight back would bring all the bystanders on her, or it could have been that she was tired of fighting and had withdrawn into a cocoon willing the storm to pass over her. She could be of an introverted temperament and one that abhors violence in every form and it could also be because she felt she deserved the slaps because she was guilty of what she was being accused of. I say this because I once falsely accused two schoolmates of being lesbians and had they beaten me up when they had the chance to do so, I may have reacted like Namtira and anyone looking at the videos would have concluded that I was being bullied.
This does not mean that I believe that violence is justifiable but I can understand why some people resort to it.
I haven’t actually heard a lot of people speaking about the part the parents of each of these children, especially Mariam’s, may have played in the incident that took place. I am of the strong opinion backed up with empirical studies, that most of our behaviour is learned from our environment. Take a gentle mannered child into an aggressive environment and they learn aggression if only just to survive it. Conversely, take an aggressive child into a space where people’s feelings are respected and valued and they will learn to respect people.
The truth is that most adults are bullies. At home, men bully their wives, wives bully the staff and the children bully each other. In the public social spaces, people bully and harass others with their posts and comments. At work, stories are replete with toxic bosses and environments so it’s no wonder that our children observing the way we react to other people and issues think it’s the right and only way.
I am also of the opinion that bullying thrives because our children are not close enough to us to tell us things or we are not close enough to them to know when things go wrong in their world. I remember vividly when my daughter was in JSS2 and she came home one day to tell me a popular boy had “quarved” her and she didn’t like it. I was surprised because some weeks earlier the complaint was that all the girls were getting quarved except for her and after explaining what quarving meant I didn’t know whether to pray that she never got quarved or that she got quarved. Anyways, she got quarved and didn’t like it and wanted an apology from the boy. So, off we went to the school, told their class teacher, who fetched out the boy and my daughter got her apology and was happy. She didn’t want the matter to escalate, so we left it at that. The lesson of the story is that, had my daughter not felt safe enough to confide in me, things could have gotten worse and the stage for some sort of abuse or bullying may have been set.
Let me say upfront that I absolutely totally detest bullying and though I may understand that a bully is often a victim themselves, I do not think it justifiable in any way whatsoever. However, I want to punch some holes in the many theories being bandied about as to the right way to deal with the situation at hand.
First, schools and educators must know that the likelihood of bullying happening in their school is a given and put in place policies and safeguards that will minimise its occurrence. This can include separating juniors from seniors in the hostel area, making expulsion the penalty for bullying and following through on all cases of bullying and molestation no matter the calibre of the student or parents involved.
Second, ensuring that each report of bullying is investigated thoroughly and fairly, looking at the issues from all sides and viewpoints. The truth is not always black and white and multiple versions of the truth can and do exist. There is a reason in law why provocation is a defense and why it is considered even if the act being complained of pales in the face of the reaction if the perpetrator of the crime can show accumulated acts that had piled up in the past resulting in their reaction.
Third, when bullying does occur, ensure that the narrative is controlled not by the press or media but by the school itself with the aim of protecting all the children (perpetrator and victim) involved because they are after all still minors even though one committed an offence. It is the reason why we have juvenile courts and remand homes for children that have committed crimes. The present case where the children are paraded before the media and asked questions in full glare of the public is a clear violation of their privacy and innocence and may not accomplish much.
Finally, therapy is needed especially for all the parties to the incident. There is the need to know and address the reasons why Mariam was so violent, why Namitra took the abuse placidly and why the other students were comfortable to sit, laugh, watch and record the abuse.
We live in a world where things we had hitherto lived with as rites of passage are showing up as abuse and rightly so. Many of today’s parents were bullies and/or were bullied and many of them have not gotten over the effects of what the bullying did to their psyche but as Africans and Nigerians we always think that what didn’t kill us made us stronger, but as we can all see, what we don’t deal with comes back to haunt us.