By Kelechi Esogwa-Amadi
Parents, guardians, teachers and concerned individuals in Rivers State have called on the government to secure government primary and secondary schools with armed security operatives to check the activities of student cultists in such schools.
Their call follows last week’s bloody cult clash at Elekahia Primary School, where student cultists from Government Secondary School Elekahia went and stabbed a student of Community Secondary School Nkpogu – presently being accommodated at the primary school.
The stabbed male student, Destiny, was allegedly in a near-death condition after the attack but was rushed to the hospital in his pool of blood.
Citing the incident, a parent, Mrs Favour John, said it had become imperative for the Rivers State government to station security agents in all her public schools to restore sanity and save the students’ lives.
“My two children are also in a public school in Obio/Akpor here, and I wouldn’t want anybody to attack them. See how they stabbed that boy. What if he dies? What will they tell his parents? Imagine secondary school students joining cult; if they now enter university, what will become of them? Please, the government should do something about this. They should send police to these schools to stop these bad boys before they destroy themselves,” she lamented.
Another parent, who said she retired as a teacher in Rumueme Girls,
condemned the menace of cultism in schools. She blamed past administrations for failing to nip the social malaise in the bud when it was in its earliest stage in the state.
“It’s disheartening that cultism has eaten deep into the psyche of our children and the fabric of our school system. I blame the past governments for their negligence of this terrible cankerworm. If they had tackled it at the initial stage, especially in the late 90s and early 2000s, it wouldn’t have gotten to this stage.
“Now see how it is destroying our youths. You have cultists in almost every community in this state and in every public school. Most times, they recruit them in the communities and when the young ones go to their schools, they recruit others. It’s terrible. I pray that the incoming government will take proactive measures to tackle it,” she said.
However, a father of six, Paul Erukah, blamed parents for the deviant behaviour of their children that usually lands them in cultism. According to him, no child given good home training will end up in cultism, even in the absence of his parents.
He said: “I blame the parents and guardians of these students that join cultism because it only shows a severe lapse of their upbringing. Any child brought up well, with good values taught in him, cannot join cultism, no matter the pressure from his peers.
“Habits die hard, as they say. It means that any character someone has formed over the years will be challenging to change. That’s how it is with moral values. When a child has imbibed the culture of believing in and doing only what is right and acceptable by society, knowing that doing the contrary will attract repulsion from his family and the larger community, he will stick to what is right.
“That is what the Bible means when it says that ‘train a child in the way he should go and when he grows up he won’t depart from it’. So, it’s about good family orientation. I have six children. One has graduated, two are in university, two are in secondary school, and one is in primary school. Though they’re in private schools, the one that graduated attended a public school. He didn’t join cultism. Some of his friends did, but he didn’t. Rather he dissociated from them, and while in the university, he joined NIFES.
“I wasn’t the one that told him to dissociate from them, but we have already brought him up to hate anything evil, knowing that evil will always backfire in the long run and that whatever you sow, you must reap. That’s the orientation I’m talking about. So, parents have a lot of work to do.”
Erukah, an engineer by profession, appealed to the Rivers State Government to liaise with parents/teachers associations (PTAs) to combat school cultism.
“It requires a holistic approach. The government has to lead the way, and they should partner with the PTAs, religious organizations and security agencies in tackling this evil called cultism,” he advised.
While doing this report, TPCN could not ascertain if Master Destiny, the CSS Nkpogu student stabbed by student cultists penultimate Thursday, survived in the hospital or not, as the school authorities are yet to issue a public statement on the incident.
However, the effort to get the reaction of the Rivers State ministry of education on the incident is still ongoing.
