fathers turn homes to torture chambers for children

Eight-year-old Shina Adegbolu, a basic three pupil of a primary school in Ikotun area of Lagos was taken for treatment at the Igando General Hospital on July 5, 2015. But an observant nurse knew something was wrong as soon as he saw the boy and his injuries.

Shina’s 34-year-old father, Idris, took him for treatment with the complaint that the boy fell down and sustained an injury on his buttocks.

But the nurse tactically separated the boy from his father and asked about the true cause of the extensive sore that had developed on the boy’s buttocks.

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Shina quietly explained that he had not been able to sit for about five days since his father gave him a violent beating with a stick for stealing.

The nurse treated the boy but rather than confront the father, she took down his address and phone number and contacted a non-governmental organisation for action on the boy’s case.

When our correspondent tracked down the man, he confirmed the boy’s story even though he tried to play down the impact his beating had on his son.

“I only beat him once because he stole N500. I don’t usually beat him and I was just angry that day. That was why I beat him. The beating did not cause the sore. It was after he could not sit down that his step-mother used warm water to treat the buttocks and a tiny wound there developed into the sore,” Idris told our correspondent.

A subdued, shy and gaunt Shina told our correspondent that he was simply very hungry the day he took the money because his father and step-mother refused to feed him.

“When my father started to look for the money, I returned the N500. But he was angry and beat me till neighbours came to drag me away from him. I could not sit when I went to school and my teacher sent me home when I could not sit to write,” Shina said.

Neighbours at their Ikotun residence told Saturday PUNCH that Idris beat his son mercilessly regularly that they feared that he was going to kill him one day.

“Nobody said he should not discipline his child but it is no longer punishment when you beat a child as if you want to kill him,” one neighbour told our correspondent.

Cases of extreme corporal punishment in the hands of parents in Nigeria may not be an entirely new phenomenon but the recent rise in such deadly torture calls to question the laws protecting children and the reasons parents have to resort to such deadly means to discipline their children.

The United Nations Children’s Fund explains that child abuse includes all forms of physical and emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, and exploitation that result in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, development or dignity.

According to a UNICEF report on violence against children, on average, about six in 10 children worldwide (almost 1 billion) between the ages of two and 14 are subjected to physical (corporal) punishment by their caregivers on a regular basis, many of which lead to death.

UNICEF says Nigeria had the highest number of such deaths (due to intentional injuries) in 2012 with almost 13,000 deaths, followed by Brazil with approximately 11,000.

UNICEF agrees that reliable data on violence against children in Nigeria is scarce “because violence is often not reported as it occurs mostly within the context where it is regarded as ‘normal’ such as within the family circle or behind the privacy of homes.”

Deadly parents, frightening homefront

Idris maintained he was just trying to discipline his son to make him a better person. But for little Shina, that home is the most dreaded place in the world for him.

Our correspondent noticed the body language between Shina and his father. It was clearly of a boy that was terrified of the man he called father.

“My mummy is dead. I want to run away because my daddy beats me too much. But I don’t know where to go,” Shina told our correspondent out of the earshot of his father.

Idris was handed over to the police. But he was not charged to court.

He was made to write an undertaking that he would never hurt the boy and any extreme punishment would land him in bigger trouble.

“I am not a monster that they made me out to be. Is it wrong for one to punish his own child for wrongdoing?” he said.

Elsewhere in Lagos, a father fled home after nearly killing his daughter.

Thirty-seven-year-old Monsurat Kazeem was crying when she told our correspondent about her ordeal and that of her children in the hands of her 40-year-old husband, Kamoni.

“He has been acting like someone with a mental illness since he lost his job. Our lives have been hell,” she said.

But the problem in their house goes beyond just the maltreatment in the hands of Kamoni.

On July 7, 2015, vigilantes on a patrol rescued their 12-year-old daughter Kafayat, in the middle of the night as she hid in front of a shop at Oyingbo Market, Lagos.

The state in which the girl was found prompted the vigilantes to instantly rush the girl to the hospital.

She had been beaten brutally with a wire, leaving scary marks on the girl’s chest.

Kafayat said her father turned on her when she intervened in a fight between him and her mother as he brutalised her for playing lotto.

“My mother screamed for help as my daddy beat her. She was shouting for help but the neighbours did not come out. He was always beating her. But when I held his hand to stop, he started to beat me also.

“He did not use his hands to beat me, he used wire and I thought he was about to kill me. But after taking more than 20 lashes, I was able to run away. I want mummy to take us back to Ilorin. I am afraid of living with our father again.”

But Kafayat’s mother told a slightly different story.

She said, “Please, don’t think that I am trying to cover up for my husband. The truth is losing his job has affected him very much that he has become aggressive.

“I am a petty trader and whenever I go out to hawk, he accuses me of having an affair. There was a time he was arrested and sent to prison for something he did not do. I sold everything I had for his legal defence. I had to resort to playing lotto just to survive at the time.

“When he got back from prison, he started to harass me for playing lotto. He is always suspicious about everything I do. He always punishes the children but not up to inflicting so much injury like he did on Kafayat. Kafayat sometimes steals and that day, she did something wrong that angered her father. I only came back from hawking to see that he had brutally beaten and injured Kafayat and he was sorry for what he did.”

The police are looking for Kamoni presently as he has fled his home.

When our correspondent spoke with him on the phone, he was sobbing as he explained that his action was “the devil’s work.”

“Please, government should have mercy on me. I was not in my right mind when I beat my daughter to that extent. I was only afraid that they would lock me up; that’s why I ran away,” Kamoni said.

But for Kafayat, the scar of such violent treatment in the hands of her father is something she probably would live to remember. When our correspondent spoke with Kamoni on the phone, he was profusely apologetic.

“Please, I was only angry. I regret everything I did now. I love my daughter. But my anger overwhelmed me that day. I am willing to report myself to the government now. But please, I don’t want to be locked up,” he said.

For children like this, the home, which is supposed to provide the expected protection and warmth needed for their balanced development is like a torture chamber.

A United Nations’ report on violence against children states, “A basic assumption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, contained in its preamble, is that the family is the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members — and particularly children — thereby recognising that the family has the greatest potential to protect children and provide for their physical and emotional safety.

“The exposure of children to violence in their homes on a frequent basis, usually through fights between parents or between a mother and her partner, can severely affect a child’s well-being, personal development and social interaction in childhood and adulthood.”

The Nigerian Child Rights Acts 2003 expressly criminalises any form of punishment that harms a child either physically or emotionally.

Section 11 of the CRA states, “(a) No child shall be subjected to physical, mental or emotional injury, abuse, neglect or maltreatment, including sexual abuse; or (b) subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

But few parents seem to be aware that beating their children to the point of inflicting deadly injuries on them has become criminal in the country.

Ugly trend, frightening punishment

In May 2015, Ibrahim Bello, the father of a 16-year-old secondary school student, Kafayat, inflicted severe burn injury with a hot iron all over her body as punishment for leaving her duty post in her mother’s shop to play with friends. He had initially whipped her till the girl could not walk.

Around the same period, a five-year-old boy, Olamilekan Mustapha, was beaten to a coma by his father, Adigun, at Surulere area of Lagos, leaving gory looking stripes on the boy’s body when he was rescued by sympathisers.

More shocking was the case of 40-year-old Surulere Raphael, who cut off one of his daughter’s fingers in Jos, Plateau State on June 23, 2015 for stealing N1,500 and meat from a pot of soup.

These cases attest to the ugly trend of extreme punishment, which have turned homes to torture chambers for many children in the country.

Our correspondent went in search of Kafayat and Olamilekan to find out what has happened to them since their cases reached the authorities.

Deaths from extreme punishment

The culture of corporal punishment goes beyond the home front as many schools in the country still engage in this form of correctional action.

But unfortunately, every year in the last three years, one case or another has hit the consciousness of the nation as showing the danger in corporal punishment.

In October 2012, a teacher in a school in Awka, Anambra State, flogged a pupil, Chidinma Ukachukwu, to death for failing to do her homework. In November 2013, a primary school teacher in Ondo State flogged a female pupil, Elizabeth Wanogba, to death for being stubborn in class. He beat her till she fainted and she was pronounced dead in a hospital thereafter.

In one of the most alarming cases in recent times, in February 2014, Chris Elvis, a computer accessory trader in Lagos, padlocked the mouth of his son, Godrich, locked him up in the room and beat him to death accusing him of being an ‘Ogbanje’ (an evil child that dies and reincarnates repeatedly).