The Niger State Child Rights Protection Agency has threatened to shut an Arabic school in Minna over an allegation that the proprietor beat up and inflicted injuries on a 14-year-old pupil.
Mairam Kolo, the Director-General of the agency, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria after inspecting the dilapidated school building on Tuesday.
NAN reports that the school, located around Tunga in Sabon Titi area of Minna, does not have either a signpost or anything to identify it.
The proprietor, a middle age man, was alleged to have beaten up the pupil and bruised him.
The director described the alleged action as wicked and inhuman and promised to ensure that the proprietor faced prosecution.
She said the agency would close the school while the matter was being investigated.
Kolo said that the school did not meet the standard set by the state government for the establishment of schools.
She said: “The Arabic scholar physically tortured and brutalised the pupil badly, his hands were mutilated.
“But the question I was asking is, how can parents bring their wards to this type of environment to study?
“This school is illegal.
“As an agency mandated to protect the rights of children in the state, we will take up this matter with all seriousness and ensure that the proprietor is prosecuted for child abuse.”
Kolo said the victim and two others, who were reported to be suffering from malaria, had been taken to Minna General Hospital for medical attention.
She said that a minor surgery had been carried out on the victim to correct the hands mutilated by the teacher with the agency bearing the cost.
The director-general said the suspect had been transferred to Criminal Investigation Department of the Police Command in Niger for further investigation on the matter.
A resident near the school, Malam Shuiabu Abubakar, alleged that the teacher beat up the boy because he returned late.
Abubakar said: “The boy works in a house during the day to earn a living before returning to the school but because he did not return early that day, the teacher beat him.
“This teacher does not own a house in Minna, what he does is to beg people to use uncompleted buildings to harbour children as school.”