What do you do with children who kill another child?

“It is the best of times; it is the worst of times.” So began Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities. This is true of life in Nigeria today. It is swimmingly blissful for Nigerians, it is excruciatingly painful for the other Nigerians, who incidentally, happen to be in the majority. It is a tale not of two cities but of two extremes.

For Nigeria’s children, however, what best describes the week they’ve had is a series of unfortunate events (with a nod to Lemony Snicket).

First, and obviously, the most talked about, was the painful death in Lagos of Sylvester Omoroni, 12, whose pre-death agony, captured on video, made for a very disturbing viewing. Naturally, once shared on social media, accompanied by the story of how the Bowen College student was allegedly tortured by fellow students for refusing to join a cult, it generated outrage. Rightfully so. Omoroni would have in fact turned 12 on December 4. Instead of a birthday party, his family was holding a funeral wake.

Celebrities tweeted the #JusticeforOmoroni and the unfortunate death has triggered conversations around bullying, bullies and their enablers. What do 12-year-olds know about cults, if indeed that was the case, and what kind of system allowed the existence of such a thing in a school for teenagers?

Bowen’s handling of the crisis, from when it happened to the child’s eventual death, has sent all the wrong signals. They claimed, as you probably know, that he was injured while playing football in the school. If Omoroni was not in fact the football being played, then what kind of football was being played in that school that would leave a 12-year-old boy in severe pain, lips being eaten away while he still lived, groaning and dying as his parents watched and cursed their child’s tormentors. As a parent, I couldn’t bring myself to watch it to the end. No parent who genuinely loves his child could bear the pain of the Omoronis.

Guns swinging, badges shining, the government of Lagos State came swinging in, shutting down the school pending the conclusions of investigations. 

But what exactly do you do with children who kill another child? What provisions do our laws have for this and through what part of the system will they be redeemed? As for the culpable adults in this whole tragedy, who enabled the atmosphere in which such a thing could happen and attempted a pathetic coverup, will jail term be enough? 

There is a major glitch in the system, that needs overhauling. 

A writer friend shared on social media a letter of complaint he had written to an Abuja school over the persistent bullying of his child by other students. The school’s nonchalance to his complaints compelled him to withdraw his son from that school. What happened to Omoroni vindicated his decision then. 

The times are different. Whereas in the past, bullying was considered the norm, especially in boarding schools, and the school system was set up to allow this bullying as a necessary formative process, the time has come to confine that enabling system to the dustbins of history. The child rights law, which has been domesticated in a handful of states while others dither has given children some level of protection and shielded them from beatings by their teachers. But the overall awareness about what the child rights law entails and how to access it is dangerously low. Yet, while the law guarantees children some level of protection from adults, how do you protect children from the savagery of their peers within a regulated system?

Omoroni’s death could help us arrive at an answer. Considering how incredibly snail-paced our justice system is, any chance of the Omoroni’s getting closure anytime soon is an illusion. But the case must be thoroughly reviewed and from it, we must learn how children should be protected from other children and what enabling system do we need to dismantle for children to be safe with themselves.

Tragic as it is, Omoroni’s death is not the worst thing that happened to children this week. It does not in fact compare to the mass deaths of children recorded in Lagos and Kano.

In Badagry on Tuesday, eight children exploring their neighbourhood got into an abandoned car and somehow triggered the locks. They couldn’t get out. Hours later, their corpses were recovered from the car. The heat and suffocation took them.

Yet the singular biggest tragedy involving children happened in Kano last week Tuesday, where dozens of pupils from Badau village going to a Maulud celebration in Bagwai village across the river hopped on a boat, giggling and laughing, as children are wont to do. Halfway into the trip, the boat overturned. With the final corpses recovered over this weekend, a total of 42 lives were needlessly fed into the river. In this same Bagwai River in 2008, a boat conveying a wedding party of mostly women and children accompanying a bride to her new home capsized, claiming 26 lives. 

These two tragedies alone have claimed 50 lives, 50 gilded vessels into which their parents had poured their dreams and hopes and sealed them with love. Fifty gilded ones lost to our culture of neglect and nonchalance.

Abandoning car wrecks constitutes a risk for children and wilfully overloading a boat, as a witness testified was the case in Kano is inexcusable. Children or not, such risks should not be taken.

While travelling over water has its risk, as all other forms of transport do, it is not beyond common sense to realise that it is perilous to carry beyond the capacity of the boats.

The desire to cram that many people in a boat meant for less could only have been possible because it had been done before without consequences. While our inclination is always to blame the government, the reality is that in this instance, the people managing the boat, loading them with these children do not need a government official standing over their shoulders to do the right thing. It is not possible, and it is even unreasonably to expect the government at all times to supervise every aspect of our lives. It is only natural for the average Nigerian to be responsible and do the responsible thing. In Kano, someone didn’t and because of that, we are burying dozens of children.

To lose this number of children in one go is unfathomable. The Kano State government has reacted by donating two buses to the community, some food items and some cash to the parents. We did not need to get to that stage.

While it all seems bleak and gloomy, there is still a chance for some good news. Little Hanifa Abubakar, 5, has been missing since Saturday after a man driving a tricycle kidnapped her at the close of Islamiyya school close to her home in Kano.

In these bleak times, finding her would be the best news for a country that has needlessly lost far too many children in one week.

Children are the most vulnerable members of our communities and they just happen to be the most unprotected. Doing due diligence to identify the causes of all the tragedies listed above would be great. What would even be greater would be devising a more comprehensive strategy to protect children from adults, from themselves and from the elements. And also ensuring all children have access to safer schools, safe from gunmen, kidnappers and bullies. It is a lot to ask, but not a lot to do for these children we want to entrust to carry on our legacies.