Author: Winifred Andem

If you grew up in Nigeria, you probably know that most adults don’t always believe in proportional punishment. Sometimes, they even gave you something to actually cry about because you had the audacity to do so before anyone had beaten you. 

Sometimes the punishments matched the crime. Other times, they made you wonder if there was a second offence nobody told you about. We spoke to six Nigerians about receiving punishments that didn’t fit the crime, and they had quite a few things to get off their chests.

“I refused to eat okro soup” — Faith*, F, 30

I used to be a picky eater, and this frustrated my mum a lot. Once, when I was about five, she made okro soup for lunch, but I refused to eat. She beat me so badly that I threw up and started hyperventilating. Our neighbours had to intervene and clean me up.

That experience affected my relationship with food. I eat a lot now, and I’ve been struggling with my weight.

In hindsight, I deserved a bit of the spanking. It got me to eat, but I think she could have spared the rod that day. I understand that she acted out of worry, so I don’t hold it against her. Plus, I can emotionally blackmail her with the incident whenever she brings up my weight. It’s a win-win for me.

“My mum gave me a real reason to cry” — Adesewa*, F, 26

I grew up in a large compound with three other families. One neighbour had five children who were my playmates. 

One afternoon, one of them started tickling me while we were playing. I laughed at first, but it became overwhelming, and I burst into tears. I was still crying when I got home. After I told my mum what happened, she decided to give me an actual reason to cry. She brought out the pankere she kept at home and whipped me all over my body. I cried myself to sleep and woke up to welts on my skin. She gave me groundnuts to console me. 

It never should have been that deep. She could have asked me to kneel down and call it a day.

“We ate the meat that was meant for stew” — Alice*, F, 32

My parents used to make stew every Saturday to cater for our family of five throughout the week. One weekend, my mom wasn’t home, so the responsibility fell to my dad. He prepared the ingredients, fried the meat, and left for a church fellowship.

My two siblings and I ate more than half the meat intended for the stew. Then we tried to cut the remaining ones in half, hoping he wouldn’t notice. But he did. He locked the door, made us kneel in a triangle and flogged us for about 45 minutes, pausing at intervals to explain why what we’d done was wrong.

In hindsight, we probably deserved it, but he wasn’t as strict as my mum. I expected that he’d be lenient.

“I forgot to wash my socks” — Temi*, F, 26

When I was in primary school, I had to live with my aunty, her two children and an older cousin. She had a rule that we had to wash our uniforms after school. Once, I washed my uniforms but forgot my socks. I begged my cousin to help me wash them, but she refused. I was upset, so I left them on the balcony.

When my aunty came home and found them, I knew I was in trouble. She didn’t say anything till we sat down for dinner at 8 p.m., when she suddenly started beating me. I ran away, but I later returned and knelt downstairs to beg her. She told me to come upstairs and receive the rest of my punishment.

I still think she did too much. It wasn’t her business whether I washed my socks or not.

“I received the beating of my life over a charger” — Abdul*, M, 23

I grew up with my mum in a small estate in Kogi State, where we had a troublesome neighbour who constantly quarrelled with people. I was an omo get inside, but I’d sneak out to play with her kids. 

One day, she got into it with my mum. After they settled, my mum warned me to stop talking to the woman and her kids. A few weeks later, she bought me a new phone. When the charger developed a fault,  the neighbour’s son lent me a similar one. I thought he’d switched the chargers so I told my mum what had happened when she returned. 

I expected a scolding, but she beat me so badly that I tried to unalive myself by swallowing all the pills I could find. I stopped telling her things after that. Even now, there are conversations I can’t have with her because I don’t know how she’d react. 

“I refused to write an essay” — Joshua*, M, 28

I was a very stubborn child, both at home and in school. By SS2, my behaviour had gotten so bad that my school threatened to expel me. On one occasion, my name appeared on the list of noisemakers for both arts and science classes, even though I was a science student. The teachers found my father’s office and reported to him. They all agreed that I should write three letters and three essays as punishment. 

I completed everything except the last essay, a narrative about an armed robbery on my street. I’d never witnessed one, so I asked them to change the topic. They refused, so I didn’t write it. They decided that for every day I didn’t submit, I’d get that number of strokes. One stroke on day one, seven on day seven. They got tired by day 24. 

I found the whole thing annoying because there was no reason to drag it out. They could have just punished me once and for all.

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