A few weeks ago, the Nigerian public was stunned by a video of a teacher, Stella Nwadigo, at Christ-Mitots School, Isawo Road, Ikorodu, Lagos, aggressively slapping her three-year-old pupil, Michael Abayomi.
The teacher has since been arrested and arraigned in court. But her action is hardly an isolated incident.
We spoke to five Nigerians who bravely shared their stories of being bullied by their teachers. From the ridiculous to the heartbreaking, these stories highlight the lasting impact teachers bullying students have on their mental health, self-esteem, and overall educational experience.
We’re not here to villainise teachers (we know many amazing ones out there!), but to shed light on the often-overlooked issue of teacher bullying in Nigerian schools and possibly spark a necessary conversation about the power dynamics in our educational system.
Joseph*
My first experience of bullying in university was with a professor, a quite religious person too, who I looked up to in my department. She taught us a political science course, and she had an arbitrary rule that if you missed the first class, you’d have to forfeit the course and register for other electives. That wasn’t in the school’s regulation, but hey, it’s a public university—a lecturer’s word is law. Unfortunately, I missed that class due to some family matters, which I explained to her after I got back. She gave me a condition: I must attend her church every Sunday and submit to her written reports of the things I learnt in the service. Upon hearing her condition, I knew I couldn’t do that. So, I forfeited her course. I wasn’t the only one; some other people did too.
Tobi*
JSS2 must have been the most humiliating period of my life. My Business Studies teacher, under the guise of being a disciplinarian and moralist, would make us slap each other in class. For context, this woman had issues with sporting waves; any sight of shiny, well-groomed hair is a sign of “big boy”, and that was considered an influence of joining bad gang
On the particular day of the week that Dagrin died, some of my classmates and I were sad about his death. We sang his songs during break time, and I wrote some of his lyrics on our chalkboard. When the break was over, Business Studies was our next class. This woman came in and saw the chalkboard. She realised they were “secular” lyrics and got angry. She asked the class who wrote it. We were all silent for a while, but when her tone got stronger, some people pointed at me. I stood up and went to meet her in front of the class. She pulled me closer and slapped me. Then she told me to wipe the chalkboard clean. I picked up the duster, she said, “Ugh, ugh. No. Use your shirt to clean it.” She meant my school uniform. That meant taking off my tie and unbuttoning my shirt and taking it off. By the time I took it off, students from other classes were already watching the incident. I didn’t wear a singlet under my shirt. I was unclad, and some people laughed at me because I had big breasts as a guy. It wasn’t new knowledge that I was fat. Everyone knew that, but some still made jests while I hastily, under fear and humiliation, cleaned the board with my shirt. By the time I was done, my shirt was dark and dirty. She made me wear it again and sat through her class as she rained insults here and there.
It’s crazy that it happened in a missionary school. It was even crazier that I was scared to report what happened to my parents at home and to the school principal because she was fearsome. I hate the woman, man. I don’t think anything will ever cancel my hate for her out of my heart.
Francis
While we prepared for valedictory service and graduation in my school when I was in SS3, a Computer Science teacher, who was a popular irritant amongst students, showed that she could go lower and be vile. The school’s graphic designer presented what he had made for our yearbook to us, the principal and teachers. This woman flared up upon seeing my photo on the front cover. She began to shout that, no way they would have my photo there, and that I was a bad kid. People were confused and surprised that she did that, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t her first time bullying and taunting me in her classes and on the assembly ground. My confidence and outspokenness disgusted her. If she caught me laughing loudly with friends, she’d either insult and call us “class hooligans” or even punish us (her way of getting us busy since we had time to laugh). It was a long back and forth, because I stood up to her and insisted that the design remained the same. I could talk because I facilitated how we got the photographer that took photos of the graduates and literally worked as a prop man for the photographer on that day. I wondered how someone who was old enough to be my aunt and who was supposed to be my teacher hated me so much. Eventually, the principal told the designer to leave the design as it was.
Osaze*
I have always been charismatic, even as a teenager. I was the boy every girl had a crush on. There was a teacher who hated my guts because he hated the fact that one of the students he was attracted to liked me. This is a grown-ass man hating a teenager for pulling another teenager. One day, he got his chance to act on that hate. I got to school late, and then he called me to his office and flogged me till my uniform was soaked in blood. I can’t even call this flogging because the wounds were so bad that I was hospitalized for days. When my mom came to pick me up, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She got the teacher arrested, but he was eventually bailed out. Till today, I still have scars from that day. I never went back to that school.
Adijat
I was the class captain in SS3 and it was my duty to go call the teachers whenever they were late for a class they have to teach. Our maths teacher was late and when I went to his office to notify him that he was running late, he expected me to stay back a bit, chatting and making jokes with him. But I didn’t. I told him he was as sharp as I could be and left the office. I think he caught an attitude from that and kept it to heart.
When he got to the class, one of my friends saw something funny during his teaching and laughed. That distracted me, and I looked back to see what was happening. Before I turned my neck back, the teacher suddenly called me to stand up and accused me of being a nuisance, disturbing his class. He told me to go kneel outside the class.
While I was outside, kneeling, my guardian saw me and asked what happened. I told him, but the maths teacher overheard and rushed outside to say I was lying. He then added to the punishment. He told me never to come to his class again and instructed me to wash plates at the dining hall every morning while his maths class went on. That was washing plates four times a week. Thinking the teacher didn’t mean it, I attended his math class the following day. He sent me out. I missed math class and washed plates every math period for two weeks. Even on days that I pretended that I was sick, he didn’t give a damn. I had to call my mom to tell her the situation. My mom told me to beg him. I begged him for four days, and my guardian interceded for me before he considered accepting me back to his class.
