In the not too distant past, teachers were revered. To be a teacher then was the wish of many. Parents willingly handed over their children to teachers to be trained and disciplined. Many of my age mates grew up as teachers’ wards; they only went home once in a while to see their parents. For long, they knew no other home than their teachers.
Parents harboured no fear about their children being maltreated by the teachers. They had implicit confidence in the teachers to groom those children as theirs. And the teachers trained those children along with theirs without any sign that they were not their biological fathers. Teachers earned their stripes then because they were strict and stern. They brooked no nonsense and it was obvious that they were men of honour and integrity.
It does not take long to recognise a principled and straight forward person. Teachers had these attributes and more then. They will not give you marks for money or sex. You have to earn your marks. As small as we were, we knew that our teachers could not be compromised and we worshipped them for that. You could only be your teacher’s boy if you are brilliant. You do not need to curry his favour by bringing him gifts, expensive perfume, ornate wrist watches and fanciful shoes.
The teacher was the ultimate in self respect and self esteem and everybody wanted to be like him. Teachers were second to none. Only reverend fathers came close to them. Because then, Nigerians did not wear their religion like a badge, the clerics were heard but rarely seen; teachers were heard and seen. They were the eyes, ears and mouths of our parents.
But these days when things should be better, with the coming of technology and other state-of-art gadgets to ease learning, teachers have turned into monsters, devouring their pupils. I wonder if they did not pass through the teachers of yore, who did not make hell on earth for their pupils. Teachers are supposed to be role models; those that their pupils can look up to and aspire to be like.
Unfortunately, today’s teachers are different from their counterparts of old. What matters to them is to become rich quick and at the expense of their pupils. We have been crying for years that the standard of education is falling, heaping the blame on pupils and their senior counterparts in higher institutions. What we don’t seem to know is that teachers may be the major cause of the problem. They leave what they should teach to engage in unethical activities. They want to make it big at all costs. We are not advocating that teachers should be poor; no, never. But any teacher interested in wealth should kiss the classroom goodbye and head for the boardroom, where luck may smile on him.
In their desperation for wealth, teachers have devised means of ripping off primary, secondary school pupils and students in tertiary institutions. They impose all sorts of levies on them. They do not care if parents cannot afford the levies. They take joy in parents’ inability to pay so that they can harass the pupils, especially the girls. It is a shame that in this age and time, teachers can descend so low as to assault girls old enough to be their daughters all because of what they want to eat. What is in these girls’ bodies that they have not seen before? In the past few days, the media have been awash with reports of sexual assault against a teacher at the 89-year-old Queen’s College in Yaba, Lagos Mainland. This is a school, which many parents, whether rich or poor, will do anything to get their children admitted into.
Queen’s College is among the best in its class and it is the last place where you will expect such a thing to happen. But it happened, according to Chinenye Okoye, who claimed on social media that her daughter was sexually harassed by her teacher, Mr Olaseni Oshifala. We are waiting for Okoye to come out with her daughter and prove her allegation against Oshifala. The Federal Ministry of Education has raised a five-man panel to probe the allegation, which the Queen’s College Old Girls’ Association (QCOGA), has declared is ‘’not unfounded’’. The old girls claimed that such allegation against Oshifala was not new. It may be so, but what did the association do before now to make him pay for eating the forbidden fruit?
If the association has been in the know of such a weighty allegation against Oshifala since 2005 and kept quite, does that not make it an accessory to the case? This is a serious matter and the government should not rest until it gets to the bottom of it. Who is Chinenye Okoye? Is that her real name or a pseudonym? Who is her daughter? What is her name? What class is she? How did she come in contact with Oshifala? Does Oshifala take her class? Okoye and her daughter are key to cracking this case. Oshifala, we already know, and hopefully, we will soon know his accusers too when they meet at the panel’s sitting, where the whole truth is expected to be unearthed.
The QCOGA statement is not cheery at all; it calls for concern. Could this have really been going on for over 11 years, with everybody, especially the principal, the vice principals and their predecessors, looking the other way, despite allegedly knowing about it? Why did they do such a thing to girls put under their care – to protect and to guide? Can they be said to have discharged their responsibility as in loco parentis to these children? Why did they keep quiet? Why? Would they have kept silent if those girls were their biological children? Why did they breach the trust parents reposed in them? To protect Oshifala and save their school from public odium? With what is happening now, what will they say is the wisdom in their action?
