CHILD ABUSES AGAINST PUPILS AND STUDENTS IN NIGERIA: HOW SCHOOLS CAN HELP.
Elizabeth Ochanya Ogbaje, a 13 year old, Junior Secondary School (Middle High School) student was raped to death by supposed relatives in Benue State, Nigeria, in October 2018, and it was and still being reported by the media following a suit against the offenders which is now ongoing in a High Court in Makurdi, Benue State.
Before her death, Elizabeth was a student of Federal Government Girls College, Gboko, Benue State. Being in JSS 2, meant that she had been in the school for over a session of three terms according to Nigerian Secondary School Standard. And as reported in the media, she began to experience this rape abuse since she was 8 years, living with her abusers, a father and his son. This reveals that she was a primary school pupil when she began to be raped by these abusive adults. And her schools, both the primary school and Federal Government Girls College never knew anything about her predicament until her death. It was so unfortunate, and we seem not to care about this grand negligence of both levels of education to protect this young girl from being killed by her abusers.
The schools should be held, relatively, accountable for doing nothing to prevent such a grave abuse against one of her pupils and students. And there are many of such cases going on right now as I am writing this post that the schools still do not care to address. Children attending our schools are being abused every day and the schools seem not to bother about it.
Why?
Could it be that the schools do not want to be involved in matters of abuses against pupils and students since their (schools) primary function is to only attend to the academic needs of the children? What about the other needs such as psychological, physiological, social-emotional, etc? Are these not areas the schools are also supposed to attend to? If this is the case, it means that these schools lack the knowledge about the concept of the "Whole Child" in education. And there is no concern for an effective positive development of the children.
Or, could it be that the schools do not have any knowledge about abuses suffered by pupils and students under their care? If this is the case, then we need to question the type of relationships the schools have with the children and their parents/guardians. From what happened to Elizabeth, we may conclude that the relationships between teachers and pupils/students, teachers and parents/guardians, pupils/students and pupils/students are very poor or nonexistent in our schools. This needs urgent attention.
What about the guidance counseling systems in these schools? I am not sure if they really exist; and where they do, they are not functional and ineffective. The ratio of counselors to pupils/students is overwhelming. No guidance counselor will be able to engage all the children to find out what there challenges within and outside school may be. So, you have a good number of "Anonymous" pupils/students. The schools do not know them and do not care to know them. The radar of the schools cannot detect them because no relationships seem to exist between the schools and the children and their parents.
But we can strengthen and make better the "Guidance Counseling Systems" because therein lies the possible solutions to preventing Child Abuses, especially, those against school children.
The traditional guidance counseling systems needs to be replaced by "Distributed Guidance Counseling systems which afford school children access to counseling every moment they need it. The distributed counseling system also known as "Advisory System". allows school children access to a caring adult that provide them all the support that they need in order to succeed through school over a considerable long period of time..
A distributed counseling system places groups of students under the guidance of teachers who act as advisors to them on matters ranging from academic to personal. It makes guidance counseling easy and effective by spreading the burden of counseling on the entire number of adults in the schools.
Researches reveal that, if even one teacher in a school knows a student (pupil) well and cares about WHAT HAPPENS to him/her, chances increase dramatically for that student/pupil to succeed academically and otherwise. And this is made possible under an advisory system. The teacher-advisors take full responsibility over the children in their individual groups; they serve as their advocates in all matters relating to them within and outside the school.
I believe Elizabeth's death would have been prevented if there was a distributed counseling system in any of the schools she attended. She would have been known very well and cared for by her teacher-advisor. All she suffered would have been revealed by her constant contact with her advisor. Such a teacher-advisor relationship would have given her some level of confidence to confide in her advisor what was going on in her life, especially the rape she suffered.
As I said earlier, there are many of our school children that are living with abusive adults right this minute who need our help before something terrible happens to them. We can stop that from happening now. With a DISTRIBUTED GUIDANCE COUNSELING SYSTEM in place, our schools can HELP prevent and possibly eliminate CHILD ABUSES, especially those targeted at school children.
If you and/or your school want to know more about the DISTRIBUTED GUIDANCE COUNSELING SYSTEM, here suggested, please, call 08027085998, or email jomamel.ng@gmail.com for FREE consultation. If you wish to START a DISTRIBUTED GUIDANCE COUNSELING SYSTEM in your school(s) and district(s) and even state, let us know, and we will help you start well.
Our school children are worthy of our utmost care and we should do all we can to give them all the cares and supports they need to develop and be successful. And integrating DISTRIBUTED GUIDANCE COUNSELING SYSTEM into our school programs is one way we can do just that.
SAY NO CHILD ABUSE NOW with a DISTRIBUTED GUIDANCE COUNSELING SYSTEM.
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