Lagos schools: classrooms turn to porn Centres

A Lagos School

Students were dressed in their neat uniforms and looking prim for school, children are adorable and most parents don’t know what theirs are capable of behind their backs.
A few weeks ago, while a science class was going on in a public secondary school in Ikeja, Lagos, a pupil was sighted at the back of the class completely engrossed.
The teacher, noticing that the source of the pupil’s attraction was hidden under the desk, she moved closer to the pupil, who was still lost in another world.
Upon closer inspection, the teacher found out that the centre of the pupil’s attraction was his smart phone, on which two objects were locked in steamy sex.
“I seized the phone and what I saw shocked me. He was watching a sex video while class was going on. He was later suspended for two weeks,” the teacher said, with a note of anger.
Our source shows how pornography has become popular among public secondary school pupils in Lagos, thanks to internet-enabled phones.
Mobile phones have been banned among pupils in public secondary schools in the state. But that is only officially as pupils still go to school with their phones with the plan to hide them when their teachers are around.
Meanwhile, the popularity of pornography continues to grow on school premises with some pupils who interacted with our correspondent, describing the trend of watching porn videos and sharing them in school as “a normal thing” among them.
Interestingly, quite a number of male pupils admitted to visiting porn sites on their mobile phones. The trend is more common with male pupils, but some female pupils are now being influenced, according to the reports by school teachers.
At Oregun Senior High School, Ikeja, Lagos, a similar incident occurred a couple of weeks ago, when teachers were confronted with an awkward situation in the staff room.
One of the teachers had caught a pupil using his phone in class, also hiding behind his desk. The teacher seized the phone from the pupil only to realise that it had been locked.
On getting to the staff room and in the company of her colleagues, the teacher was finally able to unlock the phone, and the page that came up showed that the pupil had been watching a porn video in class.
The craze for porn videos in secondary schools seems to have hit a new high.
For instance, at Agidingbi Senior Grammar School, Ikeja, Lagos, a cross section of pupils estimated that up to 60 per cent of them were into watching porn, while at Ojodu Senior Grammar School, Ojodu, an estimated 40 per cent of the pupils had leaning towards it.
Largely, pupils get the porn videos by downloading them on their phones or getting them from colleagues willing to share.
A pupil of Agidingbi Senior Grammar School, Kayode Akinola, described pornography as very common among students in the school.
“Pupils download porn videos on their phones from the internet or get them by sharing with others via Bluetooth. Most times, during free periods or when a teacher is not in class, you see pupils gather round at the back of the class to watch porn videos on their phones.
“When they are watching the videos, you may hear comments like ‘this video is bad’ or ‘see how big this one (a private part) is’ and so on.”
Also, a pupil of Ojodu Senior Grammar School, Elizabeth Akpan, said that “boys usually make noise when they watch porn in class.”
Sources in schools say that only a few female pupils join their male colleagues in watching porn. Some female pupils who are too shy to openly watch porn videos favour what some of the pupils have described as equivalents, which include porn magazines and romance novels.
“Sometimes, it is when you collect a girl’s phone that you will see the videos there; they don’t go about showing them to people. In most cases, you tend to see more of nude pictures on girls’ phones than porn videos,” said a pupil of Ojodu Senior Grammar School, who identified himself as John.
Meanwhile, interactions with pupils from across different schools in Lagos show two categories of underage persons that fall into the habit of watching porn movies downloaded from the internet.
While one category of the pupils intentionally search for porn materials online, a second group innocently stumble on the materials online. Sadly, sources say that some of the pupils who fall under the second category get hooked and addicted to porn soon enough.
During our correspondent’s interaction with pupils from across different schools in Lagos, they reeled out over half a dozen websites as some of the famous destinations where they download porn videos without hassles.
Our correspondent visited one of the websites mentioned and found out that it offers a social utility service where various downloads, including songs, applications, e-books, nude pictures and porn videos could be done in less than five minutes.
To download a porn video, the website takes the visitor to its affiliate, which is strictly meant for such materials and the only hurdle put up to check that the interested party is not underage, requires that the visitor states that he or she is 18 years and above by clicking on a box to affirm the position.
Expectedly, pupils who admitted to have visited the porn site said they had no difficulty clicking that they had come of age.
“It’s really easy to stumble on the porn sites online even when you’re not looking for them, so the videos are so easy to get. My seven-year-old nephew who can browse (the internet) has stumbled on a porn site before and was asking me about the things he saw,” said Samuel Ojo, a 15-year-old pupil of Opebi Grammar School, Ikeja.
So far, the existing ban on the use of mobile phones by public secondary school pupils has failed to check the increasing but dangerous popularity of porn in schools. Pupils are able to escape being caught with mobile phones once they are put on silent mode and not used in the presence of their teachers.

Read more on PUNCH

Follow Us on Twitter: CLICK

Like Us on Facebook: CLICK