Segun Akanni, Toronto, Canada 
A video of some madrasa students in Kwara state being brutally flogged by their senior colleagues has surfaced online and gone viral.
Madrasa is an institution established for the teaching of Islam and other studies.
A segment of the video shows a female student on her knees while being surrounded by young men believed to be her senior colleagues.
A voice was thereafter heard instructing the young men, who were all wielding sticks, to flog the female student.
In another part of the video, a male student of the school can also be heard screaming as he was being flogged.
It is understood that the beating was a form of punishment for the students after they attended a friend’s birthday.
Although the students were said to have taken yogurt during the outing, their Islamic teacher, who saw a video of them at the birthday, had thought they took alcohol and ordered that they should be punished.
In one of the video clips, some of the students were seen showing the injuries they sustained during the beating.
The clips have since provoked outrage on social media platforms, as some Nigerians called on relevant authorities to investigate the matter.
Charles Inojie, Nigerian actor, who also shared the video, condemned the treatment of the students, saying there is no justification for such actions.
“How could any school authority find justification for this? Which parent would see slide four and be able to sleep well at night, and to think that their teachers are there watching with glee and urging the assailants on is all the more heartbreaking,” he wrote on Instagram.
“Whatever offence they might have committed, the school should have other means of administering discipline than this brazen display of barbarism.
“I hear this happened in Ilorin. Oya, Kwara State government over to you. You have a duty to redeem yourself before the whole world otherwise you would only have succeeded in raising hardened criminals that would turn around to terrorise society tomorrow.
“Say no to brutality, say no to man’s inhumanity to man, say no to violence, say no to torture.”
A number of celebrities like Monalisa Chinda Coker, Nedu Wazobia, and Gbenga Adeyinka took to the comment section to condemn the act.
“This is not just animalistic, it is criminal. Nobody has a right to mete out such punishment on a fellow human being under any guise. They even beat a lady and one bastard is in the background urging them on saying “ẹ nọ̀,” Adeyinya wrote.
“We will now complain that people are beheading and carrying out dastardly acts against other Nigerians when we are actually breeding hardened criminals in the name of religion. Shame! the Kwara state govt must get to the root of this and bring out the culprits as well as teachers to face the full wrath of the law.”
On her part, Coker wrote: “The heart of man… so over the top wicked.. so one person can’t do the flogging? They must be 4,5 plus the koboko join… then they go and pray after one hour … smh so vigorously.”
A Twitter user also wrote: “Are there no better way? Even if they did something wrong, are there no other alternatives. If some of them sue, then everyone will beg them to drop the case and accept Allah’s will. You can’t beat my kids like this & expect me to understand, not even after making it go viral.”
