Ndi Imo | DOWEN: Encounter with Bullies in my JSS1
DOWEN: Encounter with Bullies in my JSS1
One bright morning of September 2001, my second day in government secondary school Owerri, I was a fresh and excited new student in JSS1.
I enthusiastically went in search of my cousin, he was in SS2B , he told me so. It was somehow customary, an unwritten law that when you are new in a school, you warm up to your brothers, neigbour or family friends who are in the same school but seniors. Even your parents will tell you to, that senior colleague will even check on you occasionally, come home with you if you live in the same place. I would think it was for guidance and maybe protection, by all means scratch that, it was definitely for protection even though few people will be willing to admit.
The clearest empirical evidence is in the fact that the more notorious your senior brother or senior friend was in school, the less likely anybody will mess with you. But that’s by the way.
That fateful morning, I went in search of my cousin, I traced those wearing trousers to their block and immediately looked conspicuously odd with my pair of sky blue shorts, seniors wear trousers.
I walked up to one I believed was most friendly faced and asked for the direction to SS2B, I got hard slap and “commot here” as a response, a sinister renumeration for my naivety. The ones who felt sympathy for me were angry at whoever asked me to come looking for him there being aware of the consequences. How brave I was to go to the senior block, one teacher who recognized me warned me never to go there again.
As I matured into the school which was mostly a day school, I realized I was to all intents and purposes, lucky. It could have been worse, I could have lost all my money. In fact, the bully who slapped and ordered me out was a milder bully, he saved me from bigger bullies. His junior brother was my classmate and I got to know the family. He is here on Facebook too, offering opinion on bullies. But that’s by the way.
You see, by the time I got to a senior class, I would have been subconsciously trained on bullying junior ones. We would seize their stuffs and intimidate the ones we could. Some would collect junior student’s money and all. The junior students will do same when it got to their turn and the circle continues. The bad ones would take it to an extreme level and dish out unnecessary wickedness in the name of disciplining someone who is neither your child nor your student just because you are few classes/age higher or you are simply stronger and stupid.
During my time, it was worse in Federal girls and Owerri girls boarding schools, for the stories we heard were horrible. In government college, if you generally avoid your seniors, respect them and wear the correct uniform, stay in your clsss, you are good, save for few instances when they come into the classes.
Many of you calling those Dowen college kids evil were bullies in your secondary school, you probably got lucky no one died accidentally through your highhandedness. You flogged and beat up your fellow students like it was the sole duty of your lives and got away with it.
The biggest complicity comes partly from parents and mostly the schools. I don’t see students getting expelled or suspended for bullying unless they cause real damage. Like driving a car with bad brake, knowing it will fail but you ignore it, you only wait for it fail and you hit another car before you change it. What happened in Dowen college is a typical example of ignoring a bad brake, now the brake failed and unfortunately the victim didn’t survive.
Back then, no teacher or school authority would do anything when you report a senior taking your money. The only person that would do something was another senior you know. The only time the school would do something was when physical harm was done that got the attention of the victim’s parents. Even in such cases , little was done. We are simply a bullying society, we condone it a lot, we see the bullies as sissies until it gets out of hand.
Those Dowen students are kids who are probably unaware what they were doing was capable of getting that boy killed. But where was the school and authority in all these ? I understand government college, every level/year had over 600 students and the school is literally 20 times the size of an average primary school. But Dowen? How was such a thing happening to a supposed elite college which is usually compact ?
We are a society built around bullying , we condone bullying until a serious casualty. Even you with little internet clout bully a lot of people here. You are also at home raising a bully in your house in the name of “don’t mind Chibuike, that’s how he use to do”. With you bad training, bad manners and bad English.
Even our teachers were bullies. Students were flogged mercilessly for not paying school fees as if they were responsible for paying their own school fees.
A certain Nda Okey as he was called by his co-teachers in government college then was a raving psychopath who flogged with intent to kill in his french classes. Once he enters my class, 90% of students run away.
The school saw nothing wrong, they simply called him a disciplinarian. Many parents are bullies. Most lecturers are bullies just without violence. One of my lecturers and former HOD slapped my course mate and friend what appeared to me to be over 100 times (yes I exaggerated) just because he called him by his name and not even to his face, his own name. 90% of our police & military officers are bullies.
