By Tonia Gbemre (Mrs)
…In a very decadent Nigeria of today, it is so ill-advised, too risky to put a 12 year old in a school boarding.*_
…Parents can’t allow the pursuit of money to make them abandon their role of guiding their children from infancy to adulthood.*_
It’s high time parents learnt the critical lesson from avoidable evil like the case of Sylvester Oromoni Jr.
You cannot send a 12 year old child into boarding in schools these days. The times and environment we are living have changed drastically.
Today, people so desperate, very wicked and unfeeling about the life of the fellowman. They can go any length to live at the expense of others.
The adolescents, teenagers we now have need direct parental guidance and guarding which third parties can’t give.
Imagine, they told a teacher, supposed House Master at Dowen, about the situation of the Sylvester. The House Master did nothing. If the student had told the parent the day he suffered the assault, the parents would have intervened promptly and possibly saved his life.
Even for us parents, we also need to devote enough time to communicate closely with our children, and listen closely when they try to confide in us when they are bothered about things troubling them.
We hear the boy told the Mum that I want to leave that school, tell Daddy to change my school. They took the boy’s concern for granted, never did anything about it.
My son was 17, when he gained university admission to the UK. They asked us to provide a guardian since we don’t live in the UK. They insisted. And every week, the school authority will call my son for a meeting to know how he was faring. There were things he couldn’t do with older students at the time because he was seen as a minor.
So Nigerian parents, we can’t sound this warning strong enough. You are living big, in a mansion, and you send your little child to boarding school. There are things these kids should learn exclusively at home under direct parental care from infancy to adulthood, that the school boarding can’t give.
Little Sylvester, if he had finished his secondary school, would probably have gone into the university almost immediately. So what time would the parents have to impact in him/her those basic character moulding, moral standing, advice, sometimes, midnight interactions, that the parents were supposed to give him? Is it when he is in the university.
Please we have to stop this unreasonable civilisation or ‘open eye’ some parents are using to endanger lives of their children. I advise, it is too risky to send a minor into boarding school.
There is no point for this ‘show off’, ‘we have arrived’ or ‘open eye’ mentality in our decadent Nigeria of today that a parent will just go and dump his 10 year old child in some distant deadly environment in the name of boarding school.
Educating our children is not a competition. Please, parents, make sure you take your children yourself to and from school everyday. Everyday, talk to them, check their lesson notes, school work. If they are not doing well, engage a teacher for extra teaching.
Wake up with your children in the morning, pray together, talk to them closely, make them have confidence in you being the first person they would always want to confide in about their personal issues.
Personally, I monitor my children, check their phones to see the conversations they are engaged in. I bump into their rooms, try to know what they are doing. It is very important that parents try to know their children’s friends and their parents. Try to know their challenges and what they are passing through.
The situation today when a father will be in Zamfara, mother is in Uyo, in the name of chasing money to give the children best life is m big mistake. All the moneys in the world can’t buy life. All the wealth we want to acquire are for the children. If the children turn out wayward, all the money will disappear in a flash when you bequeath it to them.
Please we need drastic change. The school is not all about the big buildings or the how high the school fees are. No parent should allow a 12 year old to be caged in a boarding school in Nigeria of today, no way. I took my daughter to Huddersfield, UK when she was 17.
She was crying, I was crying as I left her at the train station to go back to school and start learning to be on her own. Even as grown as they are now, whenever they come home or I visit them in their various locations, I check on my children in their room from time to time, before the other day comes.
The other day they found condom on a 12 year old girl. Today it’s Sylvester that has been killed, in the name of boarding school.
Please, parents must shun this boarding school syndrome. It is no longer fashionable, gainful in a very decadent Nigeria. Look at those boys that killed the unlucky child now. They were experimenting with a human life, not knowing the veracity of the chemical they were administering in him.
They say charity begins at home, so the attitude of those depraved Dowen school children also tells you the type of parents they may have. A child that has been nurtured to differentiate between wrong and right will not engage in such a deadly game.
If you call your children in the morning and warn them to stay away from trouble or evil and that you won’t shield them from facing the law if they indulge in unlawful acts, they will be cautioned.
We are told that one of the suspected bullies who killed Sylvester has been a bully in a school in Warri, Delta. Now they moved him to a Lagos school and he got worse. Whoever is his parents are wicked. They are very wicked.
God refused to crown Ellae because Ellae failed to give proper upbringing to his children in the fear of the Lord. The way your children behave speaks what type of parents you are. Tell me your friend, they say, and I will tell you who you are.
The hard lesson is, God helping us, we must try and make change. Stop putting 10, 11, 12 year olds in boarding schools. Let’s first be good parents, then we can properly groom our children to be good in the society.
We must have time for our children. Time is something we create, because nobody actually has time anyway. One bad child is a threat to an entire society.
Tonia Gbemre (Mrs)*_
6th December,2021*_
