MɪDᴇ 🫥

I was in JSS 3 in Mayflower School when this teacher came into the class and started to announce names. He announced my name. They were trying to select prefects for the junior secondary school. He did his screening there and then, asked me to sit down and selected a few others. He asked them to follow him. They spent like an hour away from the classroom. When they got back, none of them was smiling. I asked them what happened and they said they've been chosen as prefects. So why were they all frowning and some of them crying? They were beaten by some teachers for them to understand that they had great responsibility as prefects. They were beaten to keep them active. Imagine the nonsense. It's one of the most irresponsible things I've ever seen. I was very happy that I wasn't selected. Naso dem for lash me like thief. Imagine shooting a military officer because you've made him a captain. Same JSS 3. We were on the Assembly Ground one morning when the Principal said “JSS 3 students, please stay behind after the Assembly. Let's do some chastising for you.” As I heard the word ‘chastising’, I knew it was conference beating. Conference beating was a termly punishment for students who had 5 F9s or more in their results. They'd line tables and students will be beaten on each table. You'll then go and scrape your hair afterwards. It was borderline crazy. The hair bit was to shame them because once we saw that at the beginning of the term, we knew it's because of 5 F9s. That morning in JSS 3, it wasn't about results. They said we were recalcitrant and thought beating us would change how we behaved. We were probably nearly a thousand students and the sins of probably less than a hundred was why we were lashed on tables. I never forgot that day. I remember the Principal, where she stood that morning and her countenance as she said “chastise”. How you go beat me like thief because some people stubborn? In SS 2 too, I was the class captain and this teacher who taught us Oral English had published a book. He sold the book for N250. I refused to buy it. I didn't think there was anything in that book I wouldn't know without it. It wasn't all that. He told the class that whoever didn't have his book will be beaten and I told myself that'd be the first and only time I'll ‘stab’ a class. I did. I watched from afar as he lashed students for not buying his book. It was irresponsible. I never bought the book. Another term in the same class, there was an Economics teacher who sold a book he wrote. A low-quality textbook. He decided to give out 10-15 marks to everyone who bought his book. Unfortunately for me, he took our Economics that term. I didn't get an A because I refused to buy the book. The atrocities committed in Nigerian secondary schools were/are crazy. I love that school and I'm proud of its training, but there were so many people who were definitely low quality human beings in the kind of decisions they took.