By Mabinty Magdalene Kamara
The increasingly rate of violence among school pupils has become a concern for parents and school authorities but how to address the phenomenon appears to be lost on everyone.
Three schools are at the heart of it - Government Rokel Secondary School, Government Model Technical School, and Albert Academy.
In the last few months these schools have seen no respite, as their pupils attack one another for unknown reasons.
This fighting has also come much to the discomfort of residents in communities around the Circular Road area where all three schools are situated, which is also a popular business district.
As the pupils throw stones and other missiles at each other, traffic flow is seriously disrupted.
Consequently, Circular Road has become notoriously known for gang violence in recent months.
All parties in the ongoing inter school rivalry have their own explanations about the spontaneous outburst of fighting. One pupil of the Albert Academy told Politico that it was hard for them not to engage in violence if they were attacked.
“Most times we get attacked after school, so you just need to defend yourself since there is no one to defend you at that moment,” he said.
Sahr Dawda, Principal of Model Secondary Technical School, defended his pupils. He said they were not responsible for the alleged attacks and the violence that usually follow. He added that they were just unfortunate, because of the location of their school.
“My school has not been too involved in violence. But it has just been serving as a battle field being that it is located between Rokel and Academy, they meet at the gate,” Mr Dawda told Politico.
Model is situated at the junction of Tower Hill. The school is sandwiched by Albert Academy from Fourah Bay College end, and Rokel from Tower hill end.
Mr Dawda said his pupils brought up an initiative of uniting the two schools but that this was not successful because Rokel Secondary School turned the proposal down.
Such move has made Model a new target for Rokel, according to Principal Dawda.
“Just yesterday, after I had dispatched my pupils to go home. I was told they (Police) arrested two Rokel boys at my gate with weapons like scissors, knife, etc, and that they came in their [large] numbers but by then my pupils had gone home,” he explained.
But Andrew Sesay, Principal of Rokel, denied that the trouble makers were attending his school. He said a particular chap who goes by the name Tapia Kanu, for instance, was known to be roaming around and causing trouble in the name of different schools.
“Tapia Kanu has been flouting these three schools. He doesn’t have a fixed abode. You can’t point at a school for being the perpetrator of these violent activities because most of the boys that are causing troubles after school hours are not pupils of any of the schools they purport to be. But they have uniforms for all the schools so they can put on any one when they want to cause problems and others will follow suit,” Sesay said.
The causes of these fighting are hard to tell, but some analysts suspect that reasons like gang supremacy and ego are at the center of it.
The question remains now how to handle the problem.
According to Mr Dawda of Model, they have engaged the police on several occasions and were collectively planning to get a police post in the area. This will ensure the security of other people, he said.
The provision of a police post would be backed up with occasional flogging of pupils who engage in fighting, Dawda said, adding that they also planned to host a workshop on violence for some people in the schools.
(C) Politico 02/16/16
