BY AGNES NWORIE, ABAKALIKI
The European Union-United Nations Spotlight Initiative and the National Orientation Agency, Ebonyi State, have expressed displeasure about the spate of violence on school children in the state, and expressed a strong desire to have it totally eradicated for posterity sake.
The organisations spoke in Abakaliki, over the weekend during a three-day-engagement with Ezza South Local Government Secondary School Teachers, on ending violence against children and women.
Victor Atuchukwu, a Child Specialist at the Enugu Field Office of UNICEF, advocated that the harmful practices should be stopped in various communities.
He charged the teachers with the responsibility of ending the vice in their respective schools.
The EU-UN and the NOA expressly called on teachers in the state to stop the menace to avert it eating deeper into the education sector.
Atuchukwu noted that it was important that violence against students and pupils in schools, which he described as worrisome be managed so that it does not run out of control and get to the communities.
The Ebonyi State National Orientation Agency, Director, Desmond Onwo, in his remarks urged the teachers to contribute their quotas in ending violence against school children which he regretted was on the increase on daily basis in Ebonyi State.
“There must be change from today. I pray that we can no longer hear incident of violence against women and children. We must do something about this ugly phenomenon which our school children also suffer”, he said.
On her part, one of the resource persons Ijeoma Aja-Nwachukwu of the state’s Ministry of Justice, decried corporal punishment in schools which she said had become a tradition.
“Why we have cultists today is that they started enjoying flogging in schools as part of living and that is why we have cultism. But I think that this programme has made teachers know that corporal punishment is part of violence against school children.”
She warned teachers against corporal punishments, and maintained that the law would take its course against any teacher who perpetrated the act against any school child.
