19 hours ago
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Mrs Oluwatoyin, a parent, speaks to BIODUN BUSARI about the pain her two-year-old child endured in hospital after she returned home from school with incisions on her body
How long has your daughter been attending the school you registered her at?
She joined the school in September 2024. It was when the new session commenced that she joined them.
How old is she?
She’s two years and nine months old. She will be three in June.
How did you notice the incision on her body when it happened?
The last time she was in school was on the 28th of February 2025. That was two months ago. I went to pick her up from school that day because I’ve always been the one to drop her off and pick her up, except when her father is around.
So, I went to the school to pick her up that day, and immediately she jumped into the car, she fell asleep. That was very unusual for her. By the time we got home, she was still asleep. I carried her inside and took off her uniform.
When I did that, I saw marks on her body, but I initially thought they were scratches. They were small, so I assumed it was a nail scratch or perhaps something that happened while she was playing with her friends at school, as children do.
That same day, she began running a temperature. I usually ask her routine questions after returning from school, like if anybody touched her genitals. But when I noticed the mark on the 28th, I couldn’t ask her any of those questions as she slept through the day.
Did the hospital tell you that those marks were incisions?
I thought it was just a scratch because when I first saw the marks, I didn’t know what they were. I took a picture of them and sent it to her dad at work. He said, “This is an incision.” He wasn’t the only one who confirmed it. I sent the picture to five people — my husband, my brother, my sister, and my neighbour — to confirm the marks.
I saw the marks on the 28th of February. That was the first time I noticed them. Then, on Wednesday, I was at the hospital again, and by that time, the marks were already forming the wound of an incision.
On Tuesday, I saw the marks again, so I took another picture and sent it to my husband, as he was not around. I also sent it to other people, and we all confirmed that it was an incision, not a scratch. That was when I went to the school to confront the proprietor. I asked for the footage from that day.
How did Mrs Alabi find out before coming to you?
That Sunday morning, after we left the hospital and came back home, we started giving her medication. But she was still running a temperature. On Tuesday night, just after 11 pm, she started vomiting.
She had been vomiting since Sunday, but it wasn’t much. When the vomiting increased and her temperature spiked, she became weak and tired, so we rushed her to the hospital. When we arrived, the doctors said she was short of breath and needed to be stabilised.
She was admitted, and on Wednesday, while she was there, I noticed the marks again. By then, the marks had changed colour, and they didn’t look as sharp. I thought perhaps the scratch was healing. I didn’t even know what an incision was. We were discharged on Friday evening.
She spent four days in the hospital. As soon as I sent the picture to my older brother, he confirmed that it was an incision. Once my daughter started to feel a bit better, I asked her, “What happened to you at school?” She said, “My teacher put pepper on my back.”
Immediately, I called my neighbour. Before that, I had already asked my neighbour to come and help me check the marks, but she too didn’t know what the incision was. She took a picture and sent it to her mother, who confirmed it was an incision. My neighbour followed us to the hospital when we took her there.
After her mother confirmed what it was, my neighbour remembered that Al-Ameen was also unwell. She told me that she heard that Al-Ameen had been vomiting as well. That’s how we went to Al-Ameen’s mother’s shop.
When we arrived, we asked questions, and Al-Ameen’s mother showed us the marks on his body. He had been feeling unwell since that time. I tried to check Al-Ameen’s back, but his marks were around the side of his tummy.
Did the school management explain what happened?
After I told my husband everything, he said we should go to the school and ask for CCTV footage. When we got there, the first thing I did was explain to the teacher what we saw on the students’ bodies. Kayla confirmed that her teacher put pepper on her back.
She said, “My teacher asked me to bend down and (he/she) put pepper on my back.” We then asked for the CCTV footage from that day. We also requested to speak with the teacher who was in the class at the time.
The proprietress wasn’t open to that kind of conversation. She was very defensive. My husband spoke with her on the phone for about five to 10 minutes. I had already spoken to her, but she wasn’t helping. All she kept saying was that something like that could never happen at her school. She claimed to pray in the school every morning and was extremely defensive during the phone conversation.
On one or two occasions that my husband spoke with her, he suggested that she look inward, perhaps someone was trying to cause trouble at the school. We also shared positive reports about the school before, mentioning the CCTV, the environment, and other good reports.
She was defensive, even though my husband was approaching her from a position of not accusing her. No empathy or sympathy was shown for the children or the parents. She told me that the CCTV footage wasn’t recorded at that time and that she could only watch it live.
She said the camera had issues and that she had called an engineer. I asked if we could speak to the teachers, but she told us to take our daughter to the class and point out the teacher who did it. She didn’t even follow us downstairs, as her office was upstairs.
She told me to go to the class with the baby and point at the teacher. As an adult, in a situation like a robbery case, I know that the police usually place the suspects in a glass booth so that the person identifying them cannot be seen. But here, the woman was asking a two-year-old, nine-month-old child to point to an adult, a grown teacher, whom she could be scared of. Only a few children could do that.
What was the reaction of the PTA to this?
The Public Relations Officer 2 (PRO 2) of the PTA came. It was that day I learnt there were two PROs. We also discovered that there was a WhatsApp group because the proprietress had not added us to it.
Since we registered my daughter in September last year, we haven’t been added to the group. I found out when the PRO called. I met with PRO 2 and answered all her questions. I explained that my husband and I are not troublemakers. An incident occurred on the 5th of December 2024, when my daughter’s class teacher slapped her, leaving marks on her face for up to four days.
The proprietress tried to suggest that we were victimising her because of that incident. I told the PTA spokesperson that there was no such thing. We simply wanted to know who put incisions on our child’s body. That’s all.
Do you have any proof that a teacher slapped your daughter?
On the 5th of December 2024, the teacher slapped my daughter, and the fingerprints were on her face for four days. When I was there, many people suggested that we should call the police and have the teacher arrested. We told them we wouldn’t do anything like that. We went to the school and spoke with the proprietress.
We explained to her that we would not arrest the teacher because we assumed it was a mistake that wouldn’t happen again. We pleaded with the proprietress not to sack the teacher. If she wanted to sack her, she should have done so before we arrived at the school the following day.
We didn’t involve the PTA in this. The proprietress should have, but she didn’t. Even the husband pleaded on the teacher’s behalf, as he is an elderly man. You know, we are Yoruba, and our culture values respect, which is why he pleaded for the teacher.
What did the PTA say?
In this case, the PTA was relying on the previous incident (the slapping of my child) to side with the proprietress. That was the narrative she was selling to them.
She was trying to make it seem as if there had been an ongoing issue with us, and now we were raising another problem.
To anyone who cares to listen, this would have turned into a mess for the school, the teacher, and everyone involved. But we don’t want that. There was no problem.
However, regarding the incisions on my child’s body, it would be unjust if we didn’t ask all the questions we need to. The most important question we are asking is: who did this to our child’s body? There was CCTV in the school. An inverter was installed last year, and we thought it was a solar inverter.
That means, as long as there was sunlight, the CCTV would keep running, and we could get the footage to verify what happened. Now, what the proprietress has been telling the parents is that all the evidence they asked for has been provided.
We’ve been asking for the footage from the 28th of February 2025, but she has said she can only provide two hours of footage. She provided full footage for the 27th of February, but for the 28th, she only provided two hours’ worth of footage from 10 am to 12:15 pm.
