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There are many tales of severe corporal punishment meted out to schoolchildren by Nigerian teachers under the guise of disciplining them. In 2022, a UNICEF official told Nigerian media that an estimated 85% of Nigerian children under age 14 experience beatings.
In Nigeria, Article 221(1)(b) of the Child Right Act bans all corporal punishment in schools or other education facilities. But corporal punishment was the norm in Nigerian schools for decades, and some believe it to be responsible for low school attendance.
In the northern Nigerian state of Katsina, where local government has implemented the act, authorities say school attendance is improving.
‘No beating and bullying allowed’
DW visited one school in Katsina State that has implemented the ban on beatings or any other coroporal punishment. Classes were fillded to capacity.
According to international experts, corporal punishment inflicts both physical and mental long-term harm on students.
”Actually, corporal punishment in Katsina State is now a very negligible issue,” Husamatu Muhammad Gonah, director of Planning and Statistics at the Ministry of Education in Katsina State, told DW. His aim now was to stop all corporal punishment completely and quickly.
But, he added; “We didn’t get a single report from anybody, from any sector, from any angle, that says this is still going on.”
Gonah said that instead of physical punishment, pupils who misbehave will benefit from guidance and counseling. He added that there is no need to resort to caning to maintain discipline.
”We have so many ways of punishing a student based on the degree of his offense. When a student comes to school late, you don’t need to punish him. Ask him why he is coming to school late.” He explained that punishment consisted in counselling, sometimes with the parents present. ”We don’t encourage beating and bullying students,” said Gonah.
Spoil the child?
The adjustment also affects teachers, who have always relied on learners’ fear of corporal punishment to maintain discipline.
“Teachers should know how to handle students based on their capability, based on the scope of punishment the student deserves,” Gonah insisted.
DW joined 14-year learner Zainab Ahmed on her walk to school. She praised the new order, saying more of her schoolmates are attending classes. According to Ahmed, many of her peers did not come to school for fear of being beaten.
”Corporal punishment has gone down drastically,” she said. “What our teachers do is they calm us down, and sit us down for an open talk and counseling, to draw our attention to our mistakes.” Oupils are responding well to the new strategy, she said.
Not everybody is as happy. Some teachers complain that the students’ lack of fear has made teaching more difficult.
“The problem we encounter with the abolition of [corporal] punishment is anti-social behavior by some students,” teacher Mallam Shamsudeen Muhammed told DW. Discipline encouraged good character, and good character made a pupil more susceptible to learning, he maintained.
Corporal punishment in school is a controversial topic in Nigeria. The country’s legal system is a mix of Islamic law, English common law and local laws. Individual states have the power to pass their own laws, which makes a nationwide law against all forms of corporal punishment unlikely. By 2014, only 26 of Nigeria’s 36 states had enacted child rights laws that conform to the Child Rights Act, according to the NGO End Corporal Punishment.
Edited by: Cristina Krippahl
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