Without a doubt, the bullying video from Lead British International School has left countless parents shocked and angry, when it went viral last week.
But to me, it also evoked a painful trip down memory lane because my daughter had been a victim of bullying at another Abuja International school, almost 10 years ago.
Though she wasn’t beaten up physically, like in the case of Namtira Bwala of Lead British, she only escaped that fate by the whiskers, because the bullies were ready to go that far.
This is why I’m writing to encourage Namtira’s father to go the whole hog, in his search for legal redress over the bullying episode in which his daughter was the victim.
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After my experience with the authorities of that foreign-owned secondary school here in Abuja, I will not urge the parents of a bullied child to rely on any school for justice any more.
Malam Bwala should stand by his resolve to take legal action as long as the school does not visit appropriate sanctions on the lead bully Halima and her minions, as seen in the bullying video. No one should be allowed to get away with the atrocity those vicious teenagers committed.
Now to my daughter’s bullying episode, almost a decade ago. She was a day student of the school.
One day, a classmate of hers invited them to follow her home after an exam because they had no other paper that day and it wasn’t time to close the school. My daughter and four other classmates trooped into their friend’s family car and the driver took the six of them to her house. I can’t remember why she invited them but they returned to the school a little after closing time.
My daughter was rushing to our car because the driver was waiting for her, when she ran into the aunt of one of her five friends.
The aunt asked where her niece was because she had been looking for her and my daughter casually replied that they had just returned from their classmate’s family house and she’ll be able to find her niece now.
Apparently this aunt found her niece and scolded her. The following day the niece came to the school and narrated what happened at home because my daughter had ‘snitched’ on them. The next thing my daughter knew her friends were calling her a ‘snitch’ for telling an aunt why her niece was missing at closing time. She tried to explain that she didn’t snitch on purpose, that she was only trying to answer a worried aunt truthfully. But her classmates won’t have any of that.
They constituted themselves into a torture club, where they kept seeking to quarrel with my daughter every day in school. They no longer played or hung around with her but they made sure to hurl insults at her at any opportunity.
My daughter kept this away from me until the day they decided to get physical. They had ended a class and were trooping out of it when one of them grabbed my daughter’s small back scarf, which was allowed as part of the uniform, and threw it away. With her head uncovered my daughter reached down and picked her scarf.
She looked at the five girls standing menacingly in front of her and decided that if she attacked the one who removed her scarf she’ll definitely end up fighting all five girls. She decided that she was not going to take that chance. She quickly walked away from them to safety.
That day she told me what had been happening in the school. And I promised to go to the school the following day to report it. So I went to the principal’s office the next day and told him everything. He promised to investigate the matter and do what’s necessary.
To cut a long story short, nothing was done. I kept asking my daughter about it and her response always was that no progress had been made. When I sensed an attempt to sweep the matter under the carpet, I went back to the school only to be told that a decision had been made to take my daughter and “friends” to lunch and reconcile them.
I asked why no punitive measures will be taken against them and was told they used to be friends and such a step will be wrong because they’ll grow up and become friends again.
I said I had nothing against them going for lunch but at least even a written warning to the young ladies will be a good step, so that they’ll be deterred from bullying any other student in future.
The teacher I saw, in the absence of the principal, said that that was the decision the principal announced after his investigation.
I knew from that moment that my daughter wasn’t going to remain in that school much longer. The planned lunch didn’t take place because the day chosen happened to be a public holiday.
And the matter ended up under the carpet, as they wished. I learnt later that the only reason the bullies couldn’t be punished was because one of them was the daughter of the inspector-general of police at the time.
Do you now see why I don’t want Malam Bwala to let this matter be? His daughter will never get justice until he insists on taking legal action, especially if they feel Halima’s father or the father of any of the other offenders is someone they do not wish to offend.
And it’s not as if these big-shot parents pay any more than we do. We pay the same school fees and other dues. In my daughter’s school, they were always asking for donations to do one thing or another and we always obliged them, even though they ended up attributing their charitable projects to their foundation, with no mention of the role of parents in raising the funds.
Anyway, my daughter was moved to another school where she existed peacefully with other students, graduated with flying colours and pursued her higher education successfully, alhamdulilLah.
But I still regret the fact that I went up and down the corridors of that school trying to get her justice but couldn’t.
Not one of those five girls was made to apologise nor did they receive any warning letters to desist from bullying. I had no idea how many more girls they bullied after my daughter had left but it’s a sad thing to know that students get away with such criminal behaviour because of who their parents are.
Another student at the boarding section of my daughter’s school couldn’t get justice because the leader of the gang of bullies was the daughter of a North-eastern governor at the time. All of her parents’ efforts to get the gang punished went to waste because the school refused to do so. They were left with no choice but to remove their child from the school.
Malam Bwala should not allow his daughter to be among those uncompensated victims.
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