Dressed in their neat uniforms and
looking prim for school, children are adorable and most parents don’t
know what theirs are capable of behind their backs.
A few weeks ago, while a science class
was going on in a public secondary school in Ikeja, Lagos, a pupil was
sighted at the back of the class completely engrossed.
The teacher, noticing that the source of
the pupil’s attraction was hidden under the desk, she moved closer to
the pupil, who was still lost in another world.
Upon closer inspection, the teacher
found out that the centre of the pupil’s attraction was his smart phone,
on which two objects were locked in steamy sex.
“I seized the phone and what I saw
shocked me. He was watching a sex video while class was going on. He was
later suspended for two weeks,” the teacher said, with a note of anger.
Investigation by Saturday PUNCH shows how pornography has become popular among public secondary school pupils in Lagos, thanks to internet-enabled phones.
Mobile phones have been banned among
pupils in public secondary schools in the state. But that is only
officially as pupils still go to school with their phones with the plan
to hide them when their teachers are around.
Meanwhile, the popularity of pornography
continues to grow on school premises with some pupils who interacted
with our correspondent, describing the trend of watching porn videos and
sharing them in school as “a normal thing” among them.
Interestingly, quite a number of male
pupils admitted to visiting porn sites on their mobile phones. The trend
is more common with male pupils, but some female pupils are now being
influenced, according to the reports by school teachers.
At Oregun Senior High School, Ikeja,
Lagos, a similar incident occurred a couple of weeks ago, when teachers
were confronted with an awkward situation in the staff room.
One of the teachers had caught a pupil
using his phone in class, also hiding behind his desk. The teacher
seized the phone from the pupil only to realise that it had been locked.
On getting to the staff room and in the
company of her colleagues, the teacher was finally able to unlock the
phone, and the page that came up showed that the pupil had been watching
a porn video in class.
The craze for porn videos in secondary schools seems to have hit a new high.
For instance, at Agidingbi Senior
Grammar School, Ikeja, Lagos, a cross section of pupils estimated that
up to 60 per cent of them were into watching porn, while at Ojodu Senior
Grammar School, Ojodu, an estimated 40 per cent of the pupils had
leaning towards it.
Largely, pupils get the porn videos by downloading them on their phones or getting them from colleagues willing to share.
A pupil of Agidingbi Senior Grammar School, Kayode Akinola, described pornography as very common among students in the school.
“Pupils download porn videos on their
phones from the internet or get them by sharing with others via
Bluetooth. Most times, during free periods or when a teacher is not in
class, you see pupils gather round at the back of the class to watch
porn videos on their phones.
“When they are watching the videos, you
may hear comments like ‘this video is bad’ or ‘see how big this one (a
private part) is’ and so on.”
Also, a pupil of Ojodu Senior Grammar
School, Elizabeth Akpan, said that “boys usually make noise when they
watch porn in class.”
Sources in schools say that only a few
female pupils join their male colleagues in watching porn. Some female
pupils who are too shy to openly watch porn videos favour what some of
the pupils have described as equivalents, which include porn magazines
and romance novels.
“Sometimes, it is when you collect a
girl’s phone that you will see the videos there; they don’t go about
showing them to people. In most cases, you tend to see more of nude
pictures on girls’ phones than porn videos,” said a pupil of Ojodu
Senior Grammar School, who identified himself as John.
Meanwhile, interactions with pupils from
across different schools in Lagos show two categories of underage
persons that fall into the habit of watching porn movies downloaded from
the internet.
While one category of the pupils
intentionally search for porn materials online, a second group
innocently stumble on the materials online. Sadly, sources say that some
of the pupils who fall under the second category get hooked and
addicted to porn soon enough.
During our correspondent’s interaction
with pupils from across different schools in Lagos, they reeled out over
half a dozen websites as some of the famous destinations where they
download porn videos without hassles.
Our correspondent visited one of the
websites mentioned and found out that it offers a social utility service
where various downloads, including songs, applications, e-books, nude
pictures and porn videos could be done in less than five minutes.
To download a porn video, the website
takes the visitor to its affiliate, which is strictly meant for such
materials and the only hurdle put up to check that the interested party
is not underage, requires that the visitor states that he or she is 18
years and above by clicking on a box to affirm the position.
Expectedly, pupils who admitted to have visited the porn site said they had no difficulty clicking that they had come of age.
“It’s really easy to stumble on the porn
sites online even when you’re not looking for them, so the videos are
so easy to get. My seven-year-old nephew who can browse (the internet)
has stumbled on a porn site before and was asking me about the things he
saw,” said Samuel Ojo, a 15-year-old pupil of Opebi Grammar School,
Ikeja.
So far, the existing ban on the use of
mobile phones by public secondary school pupils has failed to check the
increasing but dangerous popularity of porn in schools. Pupils are able
to escape being caught with mobile phones once they are put on silent
mode and not used in the presence of their teachers.
In most of the schools, being caught
with a mobile phone on the school premises attracts a penalty of two
weeks suspension and a few schools also randomly search students’ bags.
But none of the measures has effectively curbed the trend.
A teacher at Oregun Senior High School,
Ikeja, who did not want his name published because he was not authorised
to speak with journalists, has described the trend as a major threat to
the teaching staff in the school.
Lagos State Government took a World Bank
loan of $90m (over N14bn) about five years ago to improve education in
its over 600 public secondary schools. Meanwhile, the Federal Government
has just approved an additional N40bn World Bank loan for the state, to
also be spent on education and infrastructure.
The source at Oregun High School said
that more pressure has been put on secondary school teachers to justify
the government investment in schools’ infrastructure.
He said, “But almost every week, we
catch these pupils watching porn on their phones. Sometimes when we
seize the phones and browse through in the staff room to see what the
owners have been watching, we often realise that they are loaded with
pornographic videos.
“This is one of the major things that
don’t make the pupils concentrate in class. Such things distract the
students and affect their performances. Meanwhile, the state government
at some point was considering tying teachers’ salaries to their
students’ general performance, not taking into consideration such
distractions that we have no control over.”
A teacher at Ojodu Senior Grammar School
said the school authorities were considering stiffer penalties for
pupils caught watching or promoting porn on the school premises.
Currently, offenders in the school serve
two weeks suspension and a week of additional punishment, which may
require weeding and cutting of grass.
“We are considering introducing stiffer
penalties because it’s easy to get addicted to porn and once a student
is addicted, it becomes really hard to stop,” the teacher said.
The source suggested that telecoms
companies should censor the use of the internet, particularly for
underage persons, using the information supplied during SIM card
registration.
The dangers
A professor of Education at the Lagos State University, Ojo, Demola Onifade, said the trend posed grave dangers to pupils.
According to him, one of the dangers is that adolescents are adventurous and like to experiment.
He said, “The chances are that they will
want to practise what they see and that is the danger with adolescents.
The other problem is that in practising it, they are exposed to so many
dangers. They could contact sexually transmitted diseases and if not
well treated, such diseases can ruin the future of some of them. For
instance, a female pupil can have a problem with her ovary and be unable
to bear children.”
Indeed, in some of the schools, pupils have occasionally been caught in pairs making out in secluded spots.
A teacher at Agidingbi Senior Grammar
School recalled that the school “decisively dealt with a couple of
pupils recently caught in compromising positions.”
“The male and female pupils were found
kissing and caressing each other on the premises. They were called out
during the assembly and flogged. In addition, they were suspended from
school for two weeks. And that is not the only case we have had here,”
he said with some measure of regret.
Onifade added that the trend could also sway students’ focus away from their academic studies.
“Whereas at that age, all they need is
100 per cent attention to their studies. Again, such pupils might
influence their siblings negatively and it will be a vicious cycle,” he
added.
Onifade called for stiffer control on
the use of phones by underage persons, suggesting that computer
laboratories should rather be provided for them in schools under strict
monitoring by teachers.
He said, “As a matter of fact, I believe
that secondary school pupils should not be allowed to use phones. If
the pupils are able to sneak phones into the schools, it means that the
authorities are not efficient. Schools can have computer laboratories
and the use of the computers should be monitored by teachers. That way,
pupils can’t do anything they like on the system.”
In his reaction, the President,
Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, Mr. Lanre Ajayi,
suggested that government could “technically checkmate the issue by
involving service providers.”
He said, “It will involve the service
providers installing some filters in their systems, which will block the
sites. But it will require extensive work and some privacy advocacy may
also oppose it because they may consider it as infringing on the rights
of people who want access to things that are of interest to them.”
Ajayi said that blocking porn sites for
underage students alone would be “too complex because how do you know
that the person using the phone is a pupil, except they are accessing
the internet within their school premises?”
“In China, some sites are blocked,
including porn sites and they are not accessible to their citizens. But
where they are blocked, it won’t be limited to the students but to the
general public. However, computers have softwares, which when installed,
can limit or control the sites that users visit. There should be such
softwares for mobile phones too.”
When our correspondent called the State
Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye, a man who answered
the phone on her behalf, asked our correspondent to see the ministry’s
public relations officer for further direction.
“Come to the ministry and see the PRO, he will guide and direct you to who will talk to you. Thank you,” he said.
But in a phone conversation with
Saturday PUNCH, the State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Lateef
Ibirogba, said that government would change its strategy of monitoring
school pupils to check the growing trend.
He said, “It shows that we should take a
second look at the social media because it’s a reflection of the ills
of the social media. We will look into it and change our strategy of
monitoring the pupils because it shows that we need to monitor them
more.
“We agree that children are adventurous,
but they must not be exposed to such things and get distracted. We will
up our game and curb the trend.”
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