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OPINION: Does Sparing The Rod Spoil The Child?

Published

2 years ago

July 27, 2024

Tunde Odeslola

Parenting is a tough turf. It’s also a free-for-all terrain where everyone claims expertness. When in a free fall, parenting is like the blabber around the round leather game, with noisy fans professing possession of better tactics than the god of Tiki-Taka, Pep Guardiola, though they cannot tap the ball into a yawning net from the goal line.

Globally, fans are part of the ‘enu dùn ròfó’ mammoth whose mouths are their only credentials to football expertise, blaming megabucks-earning coaches, game after game, oblivious of strategic soccer details, forgetting that football is what it is; a game, after all. The phoenix must burn to emerge.

I was born at the Lagos Island Maternity Hospital but raised in Mushin. The first sod of the hospital was turned by the Duchess of Gloucester, Princess Alice, on May 13, 1959, while Lady Robertson, the wife of then-Governor General of Nigeria, Sir James Robertson, declared it open on July 20, 1960. This was when imperialist Britain lorded colonialism over Nigeria, years after trampling on Nigeria’s neck with slavery boots.

In barely one year, the sprawling Lagos Island Maternity Hospital, which has midwifed millions of Nigerians, was built with no National Assembly squabbling for kickbacks in the name of oversight functions or appropriation. No ethnic swords were drawn over the location of the hospital, no knives sliced throats over the religion of the hospital’s Chief Medical Director.

Nigeria of the ’60s and ’70s was a country, unlike today’s COWntry. Our slavish past is more glorious than our independent present. Why? Because our corruption grows yearly in sophistication while the wheel of our humanity is clogged by greed and wickedness.

About two weeks ago, I travelled online to my Mushin roots, specifically to my family church, the Araromi Baptist Church, on 42, Shokunbi Street. It was the 60th anniversary of my boyhood association in the church, the Royal Ambassadors, whose motto is parked in 2 Corinthians 5:20, “We are Ambassadors for Christ…”

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At 60 years of existence, the church’s Royal Ambassadors set out to write a book, “Raising Royal Priesthood in a Delinquent Society: History of The Layode Chapter, Royal Ambassadors, Araromi Baptist Church, Mushin,” after getting approval from the church leadership. I had the honour of editing and reviewing the informative book.

One of the highlights of the week-long programme was the awards presented to past teachers of Royal Ambassadors, in recognition of their roles in moulding the lives of yesteryear boys, some of whom have grown into fathers and grandfathers.

As one of the past teachers stepped out for his award and gifts, there were cheers from Royal Ambassadors. The name of the teacher is Mr John A. Ayanlola aka Boda Ayan. In the Araromi of the 1970s, to bump into Boda Ayan with your guards down was to embrace calamity in its splendour. In the words of Jose Mourhino, “You’re dead,” or as Oba Solomon Agbaye would say, “Iku pa e!”

Boda Ayan! His shadow alone was enough to cure your sickness, let alone his voice from a 100-metre distance. Before the Judgment Throne of Boda Ayan, many of us died many times before our deaths.

Boda Ayan would ask you, “What was the topic of the sermon preached last Sunday?” Before you begin to wonder, “Last Sunday ke, when I don’t even remember today’s sermon,” a cane would creep out from under Boda Ayan’s agbada, ‘chara! chara! chara’, on your head and body, exorcising the demons of forgetfulness in you. So, before you step into church, you must do some mental recollection of the teachings of the past week.

If he doesn’t see you in church, he will contact your parents or visit your home. Only boys who made top-three positions in their schools were spared when he asked for our report cards.

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One day, he invited some Royal Ambassadors to his house and made them eba. While eating, one of the boys (name withheld) took another person’s meat, and there was a murmur. He asked what was amiss, nobody was ready to divulge the misdemeanour. They all left his house crying after eating eba.

Despite his sternness, however, Boda Ayan was loved by parents and guardians, who reported their children and wards to him for discipline. No Royal Ambassador escaped the cane of Boda Ayan.

Watching the emotional speech of the now-aged Boda Ayan online, accompanied by his wife, I began to wonder if today’s guardians and parents would leave their children and wards to Boda Ayan’s care or cane.

In his introductory sermon in the book, Araromi’s Shepherd, Reverend Ade Subuloye (Ph.D), advocates proper discipline as a means of instilling godliness in children. Subuloye advises parents not to speak to their children harshly, not to be inconsistent while disciplining them and not to over-discipline them. He declares, “When you rarely reprove your children verbally, restrict them from rebellion, or spank them when necessary, they will wonder if you even care about what they do. (Prov. 13:24; Prov. 22:15; Prov. 29: 15)”

Two world-renowned scholars, Prof Wole Soyinka and Prof Wande Abimbola, however, do not believe that sparing the rod would spoil the child.

In an interview with me, Abimbola said flogging a child as a means of correction was capable of making the child lack confidence. When his mother became pregnant with him, a babalawo had told Abimbola’s parents that no one should beat him when he was growing up.

The former Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University says beating children doesn’t make them better, stressing that it ‘kills their sense of initiative, makes them fearful and unsure in making decisions, always seeking validation from a higher authority’.

The daughter of Africa’s first Nobel laureate, Moremi Soyinka-Onijala, gives a glimpse into how the literary giant raised his children, “My dad was a gentle disciplinarian. He didn’t believe in using the stick but a look from his eyes is enough to tell you that you were doing something wrong. He preferred to talk to us rather than use physical punishment.” She, however, said the only time Soyinka beat her was when she followed her friends home in primary school, leaving her younger sibling behind. “He gave me three lashes of the belt,” she recalled.

Buttressing the communal nature of child-rearing among Africans, a Yoruba proverb says four eyes give birth to a child while 200 eyes train him. Throwing in a word of caution against the excessive beating of children, another Yoruba proverb, however, says, ‘the parent who says, beat my child when he’s wrong, is not truly sincere;’ ‘bami na omo mi, ko de’nu olomo’.

From a religious perspective, the Book of Proverbs 23: 13-14 recommends the cane as a tool for disciplining the child, saying: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod you will save his soul from Sheol.” Proverbs 13: 24 says, “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him,” while Proverbs 22:15 says, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of correction will drive it far from him.”

Many African parents who relocated to the West with their children have had run-ins with the law on account of how they punished their children’s wrongdoings.

Though various US state laws permit the use of spanking aka planking to correct children’s wrongdoing, there are limitations to the severity and intent of the beating. No federal law addresses the issue. When it’s proven parents hit their kids not out of discipline, but out of malice, cruelty, or anger, it becomes child abuse, a punishable crime.

The U.S. Department of Education defines corporal punishment as the spanking of a student’s buttocks with a wooden paddle. However, this is not legal in most public schools. Only four states in the US outlaw the use of corporal punishment in private schools.

Corporal punishment in schools has been outlawed in all of Europe, most of South America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Israel, which makes the United States one of only two developed countries where corporal punishment in school is still allowed, the other being Singapore.

A consultant psychiatrist, cleric and columnist, Dr Adeoye Oyewole, says it’s wrong to beat children and expect them to change for the better. His words, “Three of my children are in medical school and I never beat them. African parents can’t stand deductive reasoning; that’s why we use the cane to crush the children. Many children who have suffered beatings in Africa turned out good abroad.”

Oyewole, who said it wasn’t the physical rod that was referred to in the Book of Proverbs, maintained that the Word of God was the rod referred to.

But does sparing the rod truly spoil the child?

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
X: @Tunde_Odesola

News

Xenophobic Attacks: Oshiomhole Tells FG To Retaliate Against South African Companies In Nigeria

Published

6 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Editor

Senator Adams Oshiomhole has called on the Federal Government to retaliate against South African businesses operating in Nigeria following the recent attacks on Nigerians in South Africa.

Speaking during plenary on Tuesday, Oshiomhole said the Federal Government should consider revoking the working license of South African owned companies such as MTN and DSTV.

He argued that Nigeria must respond firmly to what he described as persistent hostility against its citizens.

“I am not going to shed tears. If you hit me, I hit you. I think it is appropriate in diplomacy. It is an economic struggle,” Oshiomhole said.

He argued that while some South Africans accuse Nigerians of taking their jobs, Nigerians should return home and take over employment opportunities created by major South African companies operating in the country, including MTN and DSTV.

“When we hit back, the President of South Africa will not only talk but will also go on his knees to recognise that Nigeria cannot be intimidated.

“We will not condone any life being lost. If a crime has been committed under the South African law they have the right to bring any such person to justice, but to kill our people as if we are helpless, we will not allow that,” Oshiomhole added.

DAILY POST reports that several Nigerians in South Africa have reportedly been attacked, and their businesses destroyed, in ongoing xenophobic attacks in the country.

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IGP Orders Officers Display Name Tag On Uniform, Gives Update On State Police

Published

6 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Editor

The Inspector General of Police, IGP, Tunji Disu, has ordered all police personnel to always have their name tags on their uniforms for easy identification.

Disu disclosed that only police personnel who are undercover are exempted from displaying their name tags.

Speaking on Tuesday, Disu said: “All police officers should have their name tags. All of us on the high table have our names apart from the undercover among us so if you look at all the Commissioners of Police we have our name tags, so it’s not our standard.

News

Court Orders SERAP To Pay DSS Operatives N100m For Defamation

Published

11 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Editor

The High Court of the Federal Capital Territory has ordered a non-governmental organization, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, to pay N100 million as damaged to two operatives of the Department of the State Services, DSS, for unjustly defaming them in some publications.

The court also ordered SERAP to tender public apologies to the defamed officers,
Sarah John and Gabriel Ogundele, in two national newspapers, two television stations and its website.

Besides, the organization was also ordered to pay the two operatives N1 million as cost of litigation and 10 percent post-judgment interest annually on the judgment sum until it’s fully liquidated.

Justice Yusuf Halilu of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory gave the order on Tuesday while delivering judgment in a N5.5 billion defamation suit instituted against SERAP by the DSS operatives.

The judge found SERAP liable for unjustly defaming the two DSS operatives with allegations that they unlawfully invaded its Abuja office, harassed and intimidated its staff, in September 2024.

In the offending publication on its website and Twitter handle, SERAP alleged that the two operatives unlawfully invaded and occupied its office with sinister motives.

The judge held that the publication was in bad taste especially from an organization established to promote transparency and accountability, as nothing in the publication was found to be truthful.

The DSS staff had listed SERAP as 1st defendant in the suit marked CV/4547/2024. SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, was listed as the 2nd defendant.

In the suit, the claimants – Sarah John and Gabriel Ogundele – accused the two defendants of making false claims that they invaded SERAP’s Abuja office on September 9, 2024..

Counsel to the DSS, Oluwagbemileke Samuel Kehinde, had while adopting his final address in the mater urged the judge to grant all the reliefs sought by his client in the interest of justice.

He admitted that although the names of the two claimants were not mentioned in the defamation materials, they had however established substantial circumstances that they are the ones referred to in the published defamation article by SERAP on its website.

The counsel submitted that all ingredients of defamation have been clearly established and the offending publication referred to the two officials of the secret police.

However, SERAP, through its counsel, Victoria Bassey from Tayo Oyetibo, SAN, law firm, asked the court to dismiss the suit on the ground that the two claimants did not establish that they were the ones referred to in the alleged defamation materials.

She said that SERAP used “DSS officials” in the alleged offending publication, adding that the two claimants must establish that they are the ones referred to before their case can succeed.

Similar arguments were canvassed by Oluwatosin Adefioye who stood for the second defendant, adding that there was no dispute in the September 9, 2024 operation of DSS in SERAP’s office.

He said that since SERAP in the publication did not name any particular person, the claimants must plead special circumstances that they were the ones referred to as the DSS officials.

Besides, he said that there is no organization by name Department of State Services in law, hence, DSS cannot claim being defamed adding that the only entity known to law is National Security Agency.

The claimants had in the suit stated that the alleged false claim by SERAP has negatively impacted on their reputation.

The DSS also stated, in the statement of claim, that, in line with the agency’s practice of engaging with officials of non-governmental organisations operating in the FCT to establish a relationship with their new leadership, it directed the two officials – John and Ogunleye – to visit SERAP’s office and invite them for a familiarization meeting.

The claimants added that in carrying out the directive, John and Ogunleye paid a friendly visit to SERAP’s office at 18 Bamako Street, Wuse Zone 1, Abuja on September 9 and met with one Ruth, who upon being informed about the purpose of the visit, claimed that none of SERAP’s management staff was in the country and advised that a formal letter of invitation be written by the DSS.

John and Ogundele, who claimed that their interactions with Ruth were recorded, said before they immediately exited SERAP’s office, Ruth promised to inform her organisation’s management about the visit and volunteered a phone number – 08160537202.

They said it was surprising that, shortly after their visit, SERAP posted on its X (Twitter) handle – @SERAPNigeria – that officers of the DSS are presently unlawfully occupying its office.

The claimant added, “On the same day, the defendants also published a statement on SERAP’s website, which was widely reported by several media outfits, falsely alleging that some officers from the DSS, described as “a tall, large, dark-skinned woman” and “a slim, dark skinned man,” invaded their Abuja office and interrogated the staff of the first defendant (SERAP).

John and Ogundele stated that “due to the false statements published by the defendants, the DSS has been ridiculed and criticised by international agencies such as the Amnesty International and prominent members of the Nigerian society, such as Femi Falana (SAN)”.

“Due to the false statements published by the defendants, members of the public and the international community formed the opinion that the Federal Government is using the DSS to harass the defendants.”

They added that the defendants’ statements caused harm to their reputation because the staff and management of the DSS have formed the opinion that the claimants did not follow orders and carried out an unsanctioned operation and are therefore, incompetent and unprofessional.

The claimants therefore prayed the court for the following reliefs: “An order directing the defendants to tender an apology to the claimants via the first defendant’s (SERAP’s) website, X (twitter) handle, two national daily newspapers (Punch and Vanguard) and two national news television stations (Arise Television and Channels Television) for falsely accusing the claimants of unlawfully invading the first defendant’s office and interrogating the first defendant’s staff.

“An order directing the defendants to pay the claimants the sum of N5 billion as damages for the libellous statements published about the claimants.

“Interest on the sum of N5b at the rate of 10 percent per annum from the date of judgment until the judgment sum is realised or liquidated.

“An order directing the defendants to pay the claimants the sum of N50 million as costs of this action.”