The management of a private school (name withheld) in the Arepo area of Ogun State has refuted allegations by some parents that incisions were made on some pupils.
TheNigerian Metro reported that the parents alleged that the incisions resulted in health complications in their children.
One of the affected parents who identified herself simply as Abosede, the mother of a four-year-old Alamin, told our correspondent that she discovered an incision on his stomach on March 2.
She claimed to have initially noticed the mark after Alamin complained of persistent itching on the side of his stomach.
Abosede explained that three weeks after discovering the mark, her son fell ill and had to be taken to a hospital, where doctors confirmed that the incision had caused an infection.
Speaking on a similar discovery, another parent, Oluwatoyin Adurogboye, said she noticed some changes in her three-year-old daughter, Karla, when she returned from school on February 28, adding that she thereafter fell sick.
Reacting to the allegations, the Director of the school, Abimbola Olawunmi, said the incisions did not take place in the school, adding that there was no evidence to prove they happened there.
She also claimed to have provided the parents with a series of evidence to disprove their claims.
She said, “The parents came on March 11 to lodge the complaints that they saw strange marks on their children. They showed me, and the girl said “aunty” rubbed pepper on her back. Number one, the school does not address anyone as ‘aunty’.
“The parents said it was the school and I said could you not have thought of other people? Even though it happened in the school, wouldn’t that child go with pain and fresh wounds and blood stains? The other boy was in school till last week Friday, so when did it happen that there was no record?”
I said you people go to places and you know yourselves. As a matter of fact, one of them referred the other to the school. Then, I also responded and said, ‘How about the other woman you keep your child with?’ Then, I also pointed to the boy’s mother and asked her if she considered those she leaves her children with, which included her sales girl and her mother’s sales girl.”
Oluwunmi further explained that the mother of the girl went upstairs during the conversation, came back and said the child did not point to anybody, adding that she told her that every child in the school knows the teacher by their name because it was part of the school’s policy for teachers to be identified by their names.
On the CCTV footage, Olawunmi said there was a glitch that was later fixed by an engineer on March 11, adding that the footage of what happened on the day the incident was said to have happened was recovered.
“When we went to the police station, the father spent two hours and saw how the child moved around until the child sat down to have the next class from 12 pm till 1:145 pm and from that time, they will start preparing them to go home by 2 pm. So, who will now go and do an incision during that period? I told them there was a power outage when they asked for the footage of the remaining time. And I have conversations on my phone about complaints by residents in the estate about why there was no light since February 26, and even when we had an inverter, it could not have lasted that long.”
The director alleged that the parents did not notify the school on time after discovering the incisions on their children’s bodies.
“I called the mother of the girl on March 9, and I said how is the girl doing and she said she had just been discharged. She did not tell me she found an incision on her. The other woman, her son still attended school on March 7. She did not say there was any incision on her son. I stand my ground that the incisions did not happen in my school. Everybody knows that the spot of the incisions will bring out blood, even if you wipe it, there will still be some sticky things that will be on the flesh.”
Meanwhile, the parents have involved the Department of State Services to investigate the matter.
A relative of one of the parents who spoke with TheNigerian Metro on Saturday on the condition of anonymity said the Secret Service had begun an investigation into the matter.
“The DSS has begun an investigation into the matter. We petitioned the DSS in Lagos and they replied that they could not handle it because it happened in Ogun State. So that led to the transfer of the petition to Ogun State.”
Meanwhile, it was learnt that officials of the Ogun State Ministry of Education attempted to lock the school on Thursday, but the move was resisted by the school management.
