Whether you went to a private school in Ketu or a massive missionary college in Ilisan-Remo, some of the things that happened in your boarding school should only happen in a prison.
Going to school in Nigeria is both an experience and a lesson in survival. In boarding school, it gets more intense.
Spending the bulk of your time, day and night, within the four walls of an institution means your friends, teachers, seniors and support staff will shape your most important years in ways you can barely ever imagine.
Systems vary from school to school. Which means while in one boarding school, you may be required to read for one hour, in another, you may be required to do thinly-veiled manual labour for one hour a day.
One thing almost all boarding schools seem to agree on is that Nigerian children need to be taken with an iron hand which is why, whether you went to a school in Ketu or a massive missionary college in Ilisan-Remo, Nigerian boarding schools tend to feel like a prison.
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3 students who spent years in boarding school tell us their experiences and why being a day student is not really a bad idea when you think about it.
1) Segun had to wash his housemasters’ dirty clothes for a term
“He was sleeping when I went out. The man shared my surname so we had kind of built a small friendship and the fact that he slept in our room made us a bit closer.
"We’d been in the hostel for 3 straight weeks and we were tired. Every day our friends who were day students would tell us about this new shop or suya spot in the area so we decided to skip the fence and try one out."
"We ate Suya, played video games and came back two hours later to our housemaster waiting at the door to our room. He threatened to report us to the authorities but after we pleaded, he obliged."
"Because we were friends, he would make us a better offer, we would wash his clothes for the rest of the term."
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"After a while, we started noticing clothes of other girls in the school among the pile he would give us. I begged my parents to let me leave the hostel after that.”
Education sir, not manual labour.
2) Joey was welcome with the bullying he would face for years
“Little kid in JSS1. The first day I showed up, I had a lot of things in my box. As soon as I went in, a bunch of big older people just asked me to open my box, I did."
"Then they began to look through it and pick what they wanted. “This knife looks so clean and shiny”, “I like this footwear”, “Can I have this milo?”, “Oh sweet milk, let me have this milk”, they said".
"One by one, right before my eyes, I saw my provisions disappear before my eyes”.
The only people you can welcome like this are prisoners
3) Emmanuel was given a slave master before he dropped his box
“I’ve never really been big but when I got into boarding school, I realised that I was very small, much smaller than most of my peers. After my parents had left, I was carrying my things to my room when about three seniors came close to me and asked me to stop."
"One of them asked the other, “what do you think”. He’s small, he won’t be trouble but I don’t know if he can work. The main guy looked at me."
"Then he told me that his friend was to be my godfather in this school, I could call him school father or anything I liked but I was to make sure I gave him all he needed even if it was my own."
"That’s how ended up being someone’s slave until he graduated at the end of the school year”.
“You better pick that cotton, boy”
“But massa, you’s a black student too”
*cracks whip*
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