Some mothers do have ’em

“Please, I am begging Nigerians to help me because Chrisland is trying to hide this issue. They are trying to push us out of the way and my daughter is affected psychologically. Please, I need help as a mother. I am begging fellow Nigerians to help me.” Those were the inciting – yes, inciting! – words of the mother of the little girl at the centre of a sex video scandal involving pupils of Chrisland Schools, Victoria Island in Lagos, that recently rocked the airwaves . Five minors among a 76-member team that represented their school at the World School Games in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, between 10th and 13th  March, 2022 got in a moral mess by way of a sex romp that was captured on video and got exposed on the internet. The sheer horror, morally speaking, moved the Lagos State Government to temporarily shut all branches of the elite group of schools in the megapolis – they have since been reopened – and left the school management in a credibility battle with the girl’s mother over circumstances of the scandal. Interestingly, the girl’s father has refrained from coming in the picture.

The mother had alleged, among other things, that the girl was gang-raped after being drugged. Now we know for certain it isn’t true and that there were no victims in the entire skit, only consensual actors contrary to the tearful narrative by the girl’s mother. The 10-year-old surprisingly has more integrity than her advocate and has come in the open to take responsibility and as well express regret over the incident. She took to her Likee App handle over the past week to post her contrition: “I made a mistake, now I’m living with the consequences. I regret it, I really do. And I’m sorry,” she wrote. Few hours earlier she was on TikTok, a video-sharing app, to also express her regret, stating: “Don’t let your past dictate who you are, but let it be a lesson that strengthens the person you’ll become.” The little girl has more than 7,000 followers combined on those two apps. But she told her followers she would be off social media for some while to enable her recover, and she then proceeded to delete most of the videos she had posted on her accounts. With her candour in contrition, this lass needs social protection, tender rehabilitation, soft counsel and other forms of emotional support that can be pitched in to help her reconstruct her life.

Same thing cannot be said, however, for the girl’s mother who hoisted a calculated decoy over an obvious case of moral turpitude she should have taken responsibility for, and also assayed to incite mob sentiment against other parties in the saga. Given the circumstance, how she got the pluck to make a straight-faced case of victimisation and abuse of her daughter is a fitting study in the art of dissembling. Although the sexual misdemeanour took place in March, much of the narratives emerged only after the video got leaked online, leading to shutdown of all Chrisland schools by the Lagos government on 18th April. The school management apparently wanted the scandal dealt with under wraps until the matter seeped into public domain. Information emerged that the management had suspended the girl involved in the sex video, and in a letter dated 14th April it accused the girl’s parents of not cooperating in efforts to discipline her. According to the management, after conducting an investigation, it notified the parents of affected pupils of the punishment being meted out on them, and “the parents gave their full cooperation, realising the need to work with the school so that the learners can be corrected and be of expected proper behaviour henceforth.” But the school had a different experience with the girl’s parents: “In the course of the school’s efforts to see how best we can help (the girl) who was a major participant in the whole incident, every effort to inform you as her parents about the incident and ensure that this improper behaviour is permanently corrected has proved to be futile. We cannot as a school condone such. Consequently, (the girl) is hereby placed on indefinite suspension until you as the parents ensure she is punished, adequately counselled and rehabilitated.”

“(Chrisland): the calculated incitement fell flat.”

The girl’s mother, however, would neither take responsibility nor admit guilt on the part of her daughter, and she took to doing a tearful video in which she alleged victimisation and rallied mob sentiment against injustice allegedly being dealt her family. Her narrative was that the school initially told her “that my daughter whom I left in their care on a trip to Dubai kissed a boy and the boy kissed her.” She said she was advised to caution the daughter and take her phone from her, and she had thought the matter was ended there. “I left, but they took my daughter elsewhere to interrogate her without my consent. They’ve been threatening that if she speaks out, they are going to kill her. That’s it is a man’s world and she shouldn’t disclose it to me. My daughter was dying in silence and I didn’t know. They took her to go and do a pregnancy test and lied it was a Covid test, almost three times. Because we started confronting them that we are aware of what they did, the school sent her a suspension letter,” she said. 

But then, she acknowledged getting a clearer picture when another parent intimated her of a trending video involving her daughter: “The woman showed me the video and told me that all the parents were aware. Immediately, I informed my husband.” Having been shown the video, her narrative of what she believed to have happened was as improbable as it was spurious. “When my daughter explained to me what happened, she said they went out in the morning to have breakfast and one of the boys begged her to lend him her phone charger, which she obliged. After dinner, the boy called her room that she should come and take her charger. She went there for her charger. When she got into the room, one of them said she should take her charger from the toilet; it was when she entered the toilet that they told her to take a substance, so they were all under the influence. She said after that, she did not know what she was doing again. They told her to be climbing them and someone stood there videoing and posting it out.” 

Naaahh!! This mother was so desperate to mask the truth that she didn’t bother to interrogate what seemed fairly obvious. Where would minors between ages 10 and 13 get psychoactive substance in a place like the UAE with its severe anti-drug law? And they couldn’t have taken it from Nigeria, they do not have enough skill or experience to beat scrutiny by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at our airport. Besides, the girl couldn’t have blanked out under the influence  and yet cognitively follow instruction to take sexual positions in the Dubai misadventure, and also remember same to recap to her mother many days/weeks after. Some things don’t add up. This mother obviously knew rape would get Nigerians in a rage, and gang-rape even more so, and she flew the kite in seeking sympathy against evident narrative of the saga. But the kite didn’t fly apparently because many who had seen the video or heard reports by those who had simply knew the story didn’t tally, and so they withheld outrage unlike the mother had solicited. In other words, the calculated incitement fell flat.

Well, the little girl has spoken out and she has enough integrity to do what the mother couldn’t do: take responsibility. She is “affected psychologically” as the mother claimed, but only with a noble sense of contrition and desire to change leaf. Considering her tender age, this disposition is almost precocious. She needs to be fully supported and guided along, and that support should not be conditioned on cooperation or otherwise by her mother, who defaulted on motherhood responsibility in the first place and now doesn’t have enough integrity to own up. All relevant authorities, including Chrisland management, should take this lass in warm embrace and guide her back to rectitude.