*By Prof. Chiwuike Uba, PhD*

A Nigerian boy comes home crying because a classmate has slapped him. His father asks what happened, listens briefly and delivers his verdict: “And you allowed him to beat you? Are you not a man? Next time, deal with him!”

The lecture has barely ended when the father spots the boy’s younger brother touching something he should not have touched, and beats him for it.

No textbook was required. The boy has learnt that violence is an outrage when it lands on him and a legitimate tool when it lands on someone weaker. He has learnt that power carries a right to inflict pain, and that questions are dangerous.

Years later, he may be a teacher, a pastor, a police officer, a manager or a governor. The setting changes, and so does the vocabulary. At home it is called discipline. In school, maintaining order. In the pulpit, submission to authority. In the office, leadership. In politics, intimidation. In law enforcement, the restoration of order. Different words, similar logic.

This is not a claim that every parent is violent or every officer brutal, nor that violence alone explains Nigeria’s development problems. The argument is narrower. Our culture of violence is sustained not merely by individual aggression, but by social acceptance, institutional reproduction and uneven accountability whenever violence is used to exercise power. The real question is not why violence occurs. It is why we tolerate, justify and sometimes reward it when it comes from people who hold authority.

*The first classroom*
In many households, the cane is not merely tolerated; it is defended. It contributes nothing to the household budget, yet everybody knows its responsibilities. Children are flogged for disobedience and sometimes beaten again for crying. The additional offence, apparently, is daring to feel the pain.

This is no marginal habit. The 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics with UNICEF, found that 90.4 per cent of children aged one to 14 had experienced violent discipline in the month before the survey. That included psychological aggression (84.6 per cent), physical punishment (78 per cent) and severe physical punishment (29.2 per cent). These categories overlap, so they cannot be added together. One further finding explains why the practice endures: about 64 per cent of mothers and caregivers said physical punishment was necessary to raise or educate a child.

Attitudes are shifting. An Afrobarometer survey conducted in 2022 found 55 per cent of Nigerians saying parental physical force was sometimes or always justified, but the share saying it was never justified had risen from 28 per cent in 2017 to 45 per cent.

Then comes the familiar defence: “We were beaten, and we turned out fine.” Did all of us? And if some succeeded despite the cane, does that prove the cane was responsible? Discipline builds responsibility through boundaries, explanation and fair consequences. Violence extracts compliance through fear. A child who stops because he understands the harm has learnt self-control; one who stops because he fears the belt has learnt how not to get caught.

Many survivors reject what they endured, and childhood violence does not mechanically produce violent adults. But where influential adults keep defending it, children can absorb a durable equation: authority means the power to punish, and respect means fear.

*From the school gate to the sibling rivalry*
School can reinforce the lesson. Some teachers flog for lateness, noise or wrong answers. Some senior students extract services from juniors under the banner of tradition. And consider the pupil beaten for a wrong answer. He came to school precisely because he did not know something, and is punished for not yet knowing it. We might as well fine patients for being ill.

The damage is educational. Children hide ignorance rather than cure it, stop asking questions, and stay silent about abuse because reporting invites retaliation. A school can boast excellent WAEC results while a pupil trembles at a teacher’s footsteps.

The policies exist. Nigeria introduced a National Policy on Safety, Security and Violence-Free Schools in 2021, and in 2025 the Federal Ministry of Education, the Universal Basic Education Commission and UNICEF published Managing Violence in Schools, a handbook on bullying, corporal punishment and positive discipline. Yet at the handbook’s launch, UNICEF said a monitoring exercise covering 6,000 schools found that only 20 per cent met at least 70 per cent of the safety standards. A policy does not protect a child because it has been launched. Protection arrives when teachers are trained, complaints can be made safely and abusers face consequences.

The same logic runs through sibling relationships, student associations and professional bodies. “He is your elder brother” becomes a licence to command, insult or beat. Respect for age is a valuable principle, but not a franchise for abuse. Yesterday’s victim becomes today’s supervisor, and the child who was never allowed to speak becomes the adult who will not listen.

*Pulpits, skits and the boss who shouts*
Religious and traditional institutions often shelter the vulnerable, mediate disputes and promote compassion. That is exactly why their authority matters. The concern is its abuse: the follower labelled rebellious for raising a concern, the victim urged to endure in silence to protect the congregation’s name. Forgiveness and reconciliation are noble, but neither should prevent an investigation or shield a perpetrator from lawful consequences. Must a victim endure abuse because the accused stands in a pulpit? Such questions attack neither faith nor tradition; they hold both to their own highest standards.

Popular culture joins the conversation, usually with a slap. Slapstick between consenting actors is harmless, and satire can expose abusive power. The concern arises when humiliation becomes routine shorthand for correction or comic superiority, and the person who hits is the one in control. Nobody is blaming comedians for national violence. But why should violence be the only reliable route to laughter?

The workplace completes the picture. A manager who shouts is hailed as no-nonsense; a supervisor who humiliates staff is praised for being tough. Yet fear is a poor substitute for competence. In a public agency, a junior officer who learns that questioning an irregular instruction may end his career will stay quiet, and silence is where procurement abuses and falsified reports thrive. Bullying then becomes a governance problem.

*When the state becomes the bully*
Violence by the state carries a distinct weight. Ordinary citizens cannot arrest, detain or deploy armed personnel. The state can, and those powers carry a duty to act within the law. When that duty is breached without consequence, the damage extends beyond the victim to the credibility of the law itself.

Not every arrest or security operation is abusive; force can be lawful, necessary and proportionate. The test is whether it is scrutinised when it is not.

In November 2024, Amnesty International reported that at least 24 people were killed between 1 and 10 August 2024 during the #EndBadGovernance protests, in Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Borno, Niger and Kaduna states. The Nigeria Police Force rejected the report. On the first anniversary, on 1 August 2025, Amnesty said no member of the security forces had been prosecuted. These are Amnesty’s documented findings and allegations, not judicial determinations. The significance lies in the unanswered question of consequences.

The 2020 #EndSARS protests were a different moment with a different cause: anger at police brutality. State judicial panels were set up to hear complaints. Yet a UK Home Office country assessment of August 2024, summarising source reports, noted that the panels had not made their findings public. Other bodies, it said, also did not always publish the results of investigations into security-force misconduct. The point is the recurring gap between announcing a reform and demonstrating its results.

The Nigeria Police Act 2020 itself lists accountability, transparency and respect for human rights among its guiding principles. These are not foreign impositions. They are Nigeria’s own standards. Why, then, should a badge become a shield against investigation? Why should a uniform turn someone who wields public power into a person beyond ordinary scrutiny? And when citizens fear the people paid to protect them, what has become of the social contract?

*The ballot and the bully*
Political competition should let citizens remove leaders peacefully. Too often it carries a risk to life. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded more than 200 violent events involving party members and supporters in the 12 months before the February 2023 elections, with nearly 100 reported fatalities. ACLED found that unarmed civilians were targeted in about 80 per cent of those events, and that members of both the APC and the PDP were among the most frequent targets. The European Union Election Observation Mission recorded 101 violent incidents during the campaign, including at least 74 deaths.

These findings do not show that one party, or one kind of actor, is responsible; party supporters, criminal networks and other armed groups have all featured. What matters is the effect on the candidate who fears campaigning, the journalist who fears reporting and the voter who fears being seen with the wrong colour. Democracy is more than counting votes; it is the protection of the conditions under which people can organise, criticise and vote without intimidation. And what does victory mean when citizens have been frightened into silence?

*The political economy of impunity*
Why does the bully keep returning? Because three conditions reinforce each other.

The first is social acceptance: violence is deemed deserved, necessary or normal, victims are told to endure, and bystanders are told not to interfere. The second is institutional weakness: complaint channels are inaccessible, investigations stall, sanctions are applied unevenly and victims cannot afford lawyers. The third is unequal power: the perpetrator controls money, employment, family resources, a congregation’s reputation or access to armed men.

Together, they make violence self-perpetuating. The victim stays silent because reporting is risky, the witness because intervention is costly, the institution because scandal would hurt its name. The perpetrator reads that silence as permission.

We also have a bystander problem. A video circulates, outrage trends, comment sections turn into courtrooms. Then attention moves on, and we never learn whether the victim was protected, charges filed or the weakness corrected. The question must move from “Have we condemned it?” to “What has happened since?” Outrage without follow-through is a ritual, not a reform.

This is also a development issue. Children need safety to learn, and Nigeria’s 2014 National Survey on Violence Against Children, released in 2015, found that six in ten children experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence before 18, that more than 70 per cent of those affected experienced it repeatedly, and that fewer than five per cent received the help they needed. These are historical findings, not a 2026 estimate. In organisations, fear starves decision-makers of honest advice. Violence strains hospitals, police, courts and victim services, and injury and disruption cost working days. No dedicated national estimate of that bill exists, so I will not invent one, but the mechanisms are plain. And when citizens expect arbitrary treatment, they avoid institutions and seek protection through connections, making public administration costlier and less trusted.

*From condemnation to a programme*
Nigeria is not starting from a legal vacuum, but protection is uneven. The Child Rights Act 2003 has been enacted across states, though implementation varies. The Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015 provides remedies within its scope, but should not be read as an automatic ban on every form of corporal punishment. The Criminal Code and Penal Code still contain provisions on parental or school correction, and End Corporal Punishment’s review, updated in August 2024, reported that corporal punishment was not fully prohibited in the home and several other settings. Laws, institutions, attitudes and enforcement must pull together; if one is missing, the others underperform.

Five priorities deserve attention. First, parenting support. A Nigerian study of 300 parents of children aged three to 12 tested an eight-week parenting programme, and parents who received it reduced harsh discipline compared with a control group (Ofoha and Ogidan, 2020). It was a quasi-experiment, not proof the programme works everywhere, but it points towards parenting education through primary healthcare centres, schools and communities, offered respectfully rather than as an accusation.

Second, safe schools. Turn existing policies into enforceable standards: confidential reporting, protection from retaliation, teachers trained in non-violent discipline and regular inspections. Third, security-sector accountability. Strengthen independent complaint handling, evidence preservation and prosecution, and publish anonymised data on complaints, investigations and final outcomes, separating allegations from proven misconduct.

Fourth, political and workplace integrity. Investigate electoral violence impartially, make parties discipline members who encourage it, and adopt anti-bullying rules that protect good-faith whistleblowers. Fifth, evidence and culture. Religious and traditional leaders, media houses and entertainers should challenge harmful norms without stereotyping communities or resorting to censorship, while government publishes reliable data on violence and responses.

None of this is cost-free. Government must assign responsibilities, fund them and measure results. Dashboards and indicators are proposals, not existing facts.

*Changing the lesson*
There is an uncomfortable test. Do we oppose violence consistently, or only when it is aimed at us, our family, our party or our tribe? People who condemn bullying while powerless often defend it once they acquire authority. The parent who resented the cane may swear by it; the activist who demanded free speech may bristle at criticism when his party wins.

Private misconduct and state violence are not equivalent: the state has greater coercive capacity and heavier legal obligations. But the attitudes overlap. We cannot teach children that the strongest may inflict pain and expect them to believe that power must answer to law.

None of this requires abandoning respect for elders, order in schools or lawful policing. It requires defining them more intelligently. Respect should be earned and returned, not extracted through fear. Discipline should build responsibility, not humiliation. Law enforcement should protect rights, not reproduce the violence it exists to prevent.

Change begins when a parent corrects a child without reaching for the cane, and a teacher admits that humiliation is not pedagogy. It strengthens when a senior student protects a junior, and a religious leader insists that an allegation be investigated rather than buried. It becomes institutional when an employer disciplines a bullying manager, and democratic when security agencies protect peaceful citizens.

A country can build roads, commission hospitals and launch sophisticated public finance systems. But if its citizens are routinely intimidated at home, at school, at work and by those paid to protect them, its development remains incomplete.

Nigeria cannot beat its way to development. It must educate, protect, empower and hold itself to account. We need a society where discipline does not require cruelty, authority does not require arrogance, security does not require brutality, leadership does not require bullying, and justice does not depend on status or connections.

It is time to change the lesson.