Some students of the Metorite Standard School in Nigeria’s South-western Ogun state were tied to a cross and flogged for being late to school.
Pictures of the incident have gone viral on social media prompting officials in the west African nation to take up the matter leading to the arrest of three people by the police.
The three persons including the headteacher of the said school allegedly tied the students to a cross to be flogged on a roadside, according to the Punch.
A man who witnessed the incident and happens to be a police man told the Punch that he “was going to work when I saw some cars parked by the roadside. I discovered that it was because of some pupils that were tied to crosses.
When I saw it, I parked and went to meet the proprietor of the school. I introduced myself as a policeman and told him to untie the pupils. He refused, saying there was nothing anybody could tell him that would make him to release them.”
“When I tried to untie the pupils, the proprietor and his teachers beat me up. Before I returned from picking handcuffs from my car, they had grabbed a friend who was with me, Omaje iremi, and beaten him up with a horsewhip” the police man added.
The eyewitness also said that he “entered the school – with the help of some neighbours who gathered around – to arrest him, but he refused to follow me. I then called the Divisional Police Officer of the Itele Police Station and he sent some policemen to the school, who took everybody to the station.”
A senior police spokesperson, ASP Abimbola Oyeyemi is reported to have described the act as “a barbaric incident because I don’t see any offence that a secondary school pupil will commit that will make someone to tie him or her and be flogging them in public.”
Oyeyemi said “The act is no longer a corrective measure; it is a barbaric act and it will not be allowed in this 21st century.”
The suspects are being investigated over the incident.
Source: Africafeeds.com