As the dust was yet to settle on the death of a student of Sandema Technical School due to students’ riots on Tuesday, July 16, 2019, another school in the same Upper East region, Kongo Senior High has recorded student clashes. Reports suggest students from Talensi and their Frafra colleagues clashed on Sunday night. The cause of the confrontation is still unknown.
Yet again, a school has had to be closed down due to violence.
In the case of Sandema, one first-year male student has died and another left injured after police clashed with them. According to reports, the deceased was allegedly hit by a stray bullet when the police attempted to disperse students who were rioting after they had been beaten by the school cadet for flouting school rules. And so the life of the first-year student was the price to pay.
The aforementioned incident is not new to us. In fact, it is becoming a quarterly occurrence for students to resort to violent means ‘in order to be heard’. Barely two months ago, students of the Tumu Senior High Technical School in the Upper West Region were infuriated by the seizure and subsequent burning of their mobile phones by school authorities. They cut off power supply to the school, ransacked the bungalows of some teachers and destroyed some school property as well.
In October 2018, the Nkwanta Senior High School witnessed a similar incident when students’ mobile phones were seized. They vandalized school property and even a vehicle of the Nkwanta Divisional Police Commander was not spared.
In that same month, the Agogo State Senior High School was closed down for a week after students vandalized school property following interruptions in power supply and water shortage.
The Upper East Region has had its share of students’ agitations. At the Tempane Senior High School, third-year students refused to write their end of term exams and prevented their juniors from taking their lunch; to register their displeasure over the suspension of their headmaster.
All these incidents led to the destruction of property running into millions of Ghana Cedis, injuries to the persons involved and most, unfortunately, a life was lost.
In the case of Sandema, the family of the late student will be told a story of how the students clashed with the Police. That, he got mixed up in the melee and was killed.
A committee has been set up to investigate the incident, but their work doesn’t include bringing people from the dead, no matter the number of hours they sit, the volumes of coffee they drink, or even how powerful the committee is.
Just like the violence recorded in parts of the country orchestrated by adults, the young ones seem to be towing that same line.
Why students resort to violence to solve problems?
The answer to this question is multifaceted. Could they be taking a cue from the wave of violent demonstrations in parts of the country in demand for roads and other infrastructure? Or is it a general lack of respect of rules and regulations in the country?
These instances beg the question about the kind of training being given the students. Why do they see violence as a means of getting their voices heard? The Ghanaian society is one that does not encourage vociferous children. The idea of a young person expressing his/her opinion in any circumstance, especially where adults are involved, is mostly deemed disrespectful, arrogant and uncultured. And so it is curious where the recent appetite for violence in our schools is coming from.
Again, some school authorities seem to take entrenched positions when dealing with students, and this sometimes compel students to use violent means to air their views. There should be a more amicable and sustainable way of giving students an avenue to ventilate their concerns.
Furthermore, parents or authorities, on one hand, must know that the same old ways of bringing up children or students where what the young ones think doesn’t matter, is no more working. Young people of today have views and ideas, and they want to engage. Any attempt to stifle that can be explosive and it appears the recent wave of violence in schools we are witnessing is a result of long periods of ‘oppression’ of young ones by the adult class.
Cost of riots to parents and to academic work.
Students usually vent their spleen on properties in their various campuses; staff bungalows, motorbikes, vehicles, water systems and electricity meters, classroom boards, furniture etc.
The cost of replacing these items runs into thousands of Ghana Cedis which will be borne by students. Eventually, parents and guardians will be the ones to pay for this damage incurred. Mind you some parents struggle to pay for the educational needs of their wards which was the main argument in the coming into being of the Free Senior High School Policy. And so the unfortunate aspect is that the parent suffers when students go on rampage.
Another worrying factor is the dent these riots have on academic work.
Most of the schools were shut down for over a week to allow for repair works to be done. In the case of the Nkwanta Senior High School, final year students who were preparing for the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination were the hardest hit due to the closure of the school. These are avoidable situations.
Security in schools
But let’s talk about security in schools. It’s high time we looked at restructuring of the security architecture in our Senior High Schools. The fate of over 1,000 students cannot be left to two old men nearing pension or their retirement age who struggle to open a metal gate. They are often called ‘gatemen.’ And for many of the schools, they are all they have as security.
I think it’s about time we put proper security structures in SHSs and keep students in check instead of that pensioner who has been in the school for years, poorly paid, opening main gates to vehicles, and lives on students’ tips. Such people cannot contain a crisis.
In all the cases of student agitations, the situations seem to escalate when the Police Service is called in to restore calm thereby defeating the purpose of their intervention. The police should look for safer means of calming students’ riots instead of firing arms. It is most irresponsible to fire live bullets into rioting students!
Time to rethink modes of engagement with students over matters?
The Students Representative Council (SRC) system at the Senior High School level, appears to be best-known mode of engagement between students and school authorities. But the system has yielded very little results because leadership of the student body usually has very little power at the negotiation table. There ought to be some amount of power given student leadership so as to effectively champion the cause of students, and the authorities must be ready to listen.
The issue that keeps coming up as the cause of student agitations is the use of mobile phones. The students smuggle these gadgets into their dormitories and classrooms. With the advent of technology maybe it’s about time the Ghana Education Service took a second look at that regulation.
Ghana’s educational system has seen a lot of transformation. Now more children have access to education regardless of their background. But I dare say that all the gains will yield no results if instead of returning home as graduates, they return in caskets.
—
The writer, Abena Owusu Nyamekye, is a news anchor and producer at Citi FM and Citi TV
Twitter: @AbenaNyamekyeO