[EDITORIAL] Emerging Dangers In Boarding Schools

The trending story of the death of 12-year-old Sylvester Oromoni; a student of Dowen College, Lekki Lagos after he was allegedly tortured by fellow students for yet to be established reason(s), leaves a sour taste in the mouth of every concerned parent with human feeling.

The incident as bizarre as it is, may just be one out of hundreds of such case which may not have been reported in the media. The case of Oromoni drew so much media attention ostensibly due to the class of the institution involved. Dowen College is obviously not a school in the pedestrian category. It’s a high brow college that accommodates children from relatively well off background who could afford the fees.

By the reason of its category as an elite college, societal expectations in terms of academic and moral standards would not be anything less than the global standard.

It is therefore, highly regrettable that children in the College have shown not to be who the society had expected them to be, given the circumstances that led to Oromoni’s death.

Though police are still at the threshold of investigation in the quest to truly ascertain what actually precipitated the teenager’s death, yet information in the public space point to the fact that Oromoni died from the brutalities he suffered in the hands of his boarding school mates who bullied him and later gave him certain chemical to drink in the cover of darkness in his hostel room.

The narrative by the deceased’s father Mr. Sylvester Oromoni (snr) on Arise Television News interview on Sunday, largely pointed to the fact that the students who mastered the travail his son went through must be satanic offsprings in an ivy league institution that ought to be a centre of excellence not only in learning but in character.

The Dowen College incident now seems to have loudly drawn to the consciousness of people, what obviously is the goings-on in our private and public secondary schools.

Before the Oromoni incident, there had been reports of moral decadence in our secondary schools particularly the publicly owned ones as evidence of cultism has started manifesting. A few years ago, there were reports of how some secondary school students in Lagos Island were coerced into cult groups.

Even the report of secondary school students who engaged in internet scams had to do with public schools and not ivy league private secondary schools. This was because the private schools were seen to be well managed by personnel whose mouth-watering  remunerations could not give room to be uncaring.

The Dowen College incident has regrettably proved many people wrong as the prestige associated with the ivy league colleges for perceived high moral, has been rubbished.

As operatives of the Lagos State Police Command, in the days ahead, investigate to unravel the actual circumstances leading to Oromoni’s demise, This medium wants to warn of the great dangers in our boarding schools and the need to quickly reverse the trend through concerted efforts of government.