Reality zone with Vicky Wireko – Adisco bullying saga

I have tried to watch repeatedly, the viral video of the conduct of a senior boy visited on his junior in the alleged bullying saga at Adisadel College in Cape Coast. My verdict? Appalling behaviour.

I found it distasteful for cruelty like that to happen in a Senior Secondary School and more so, in a well-known institution and dream school of many parents.

Bullying may not be new in our schools. Some of us may have experienced it in one form or the other. At secondary school, it has become a tradition. During our time at secondary school for example we used to have “Homos night” on the school’s Saturday entertainment calendar where new entrants endured some jostling at the hands of seniors.

It was a lot of fun. The perceived bullying did not continue beyond pardon where wickedness was visited on “Homos”.  We all went back to our dormitories with something to laugh about.

Disturbing

That is why the extent being presented on social and conventional media as happened in Adisadel College recently is quite disturbing. No doubt any parent would be worried watching what took place and how much the junior boy endured at the hands of his senior.

Has law and order broken down in that beautiful school was the question that was on my mind. Adisco, as we all know it, is a darling school. It was one of the two best affectionate boys schools of my Alma Mater, Wey Gey Hey. The school has produced brilliant well-respected personalities in and outside the country, worthy of emulation. Are the Generation Zs messing it up?

According to the unfortunate incident captured in the video on Social Media, and reported in some newspapers, the scuffle was over a sim card. The senior boy identified in the video held hard the junior boy who was in possession of a sim card.

In the process, the senior tried hard to choke the junior boy as he tried to free himself. As the struggle went on, the senior hit the victim’s face so hard on a solid object thus inflicting injuries on his face.

The viral video has thus revealed some bullying which some claim has festered in the school for some time.

It was jaw-dropping to have listened to a parent of the school on the radio this week as the sad news broke. This parent lamented many more undesirable assaults and intimidations at Adisco against junior boys by their seniors.

According to this parent who spoke on anonymity, the situation is so bad that his ward and other students live in fear in that school. He further claimed that some of the masters even walk around with knives for fear of being attacked by students.

This, unfortunately, is the type of bullying one hears of happening in schools and neighbourhoods in countries outside. The shocking news of teenagers attacking and harming their peers and sometimes going to extremes of stabbing others should not creep into our society.

Lawlessness

That is why we should all rise up and condemn the recent happening at Adisco. Because, if this character of lawlessness, impunity and showmanship is exhibiting itself on a school campus and authorities are saying very little because they themselves are living in fear, then we have a huge generational problem to contend with as a society.

We condemn taxi and commuter bus (Tro-tro) drivers for their recklessness on our roads. We have been quick to nail down motorcycle riders (Okadas) for the impunities and undesirable characters they display on our roads.

We have even condemned security officers for not stopping Okada operators who defile the laws. So how can one look on as our teenagers, the hope of our nation’s future act lawlessly?

If attacks of any degree, intimidation and lawlessness are becoming characteristics in our secondary schools without the appropriate checks and sanctions, one can imagine how the future is going to look like.  Can one begin to imagine a future in tertiary institutions and workplaces?

Of even more concern is when they take up the future mantle of leadership in the country in positions as Executive, Legislator and Judiciary. It gets, even more, scarier when one extends the future to their roles as husband and father.

In the Adisco viral video, I find it difficult to contend with those who are suggesting that the boy(s) who shot the video should be punished. Really?

A news item in the UK media earlier this year where some students, in what was said to have been a racial attack, viciously beat up a female student right in front of the school’s gate comes to mind. The attackers pulled out the victim’s plaited hair causing serious harm to her. It took the video shot of an onlooker to bring the issue vividly to the notice of the school authorities and the police.

The culprits were immediately apprehended, the act condemned and law and order took its course.

The boy(s) who gave us the Adisco attack video on social media should be commended for the initiative to capture the incident on camera. The authorities had in hand, undeniable evidence to act on.

By the video, the harm that was contained in a small corner of Quaque House became a national discourse with the Attorney General, the Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service, Parent-Teacher Associations, individual parents, and civil society organisations, all wading in because the issue at stake is of concern.

One would only plead with the school authorities to spare the boy who has given them clear evidence to deal with the canker of lawlessness and impunity plaguing the school and giving Adisco a bad name.

Time is up for Adisco to claim its past glory for a stitch in time, saves nine.