By Coach Daniel Owoyemi
The bullying video from Igbinedion Education Centre in Benin City went viral in March 2026. Senior students. A junior student on the ground. A classroom full of witnesses. Within hours, it had travelled across every platform Nigeria owns. The outrage was immediate, loud, and entirely understandable.
But outrage is not diagnosis.
And here is the question that the outrage has not yet answered. How did we get here? Not the legal question. Not the disciplinary one. The deeper one. The systemic one. The one that implicates not just those students, but all of us.
Because what we witnessed was not an anomaly. It was an inevitability. The predictable outcome of a gap we have refused to close for decades.
The Pattern We Keep Missing
When incidents like this surface, the national response follows a familiar script. Students condemned. School questioned. Parents summoned. Authorities arrive with statements. And slowly, as the news cycle moves on, the conversation dissolves, until the next incident forces it back to the surface.
In Nigeria, this cycle has become chronic.
We have mastered the art of reacting to outcomes while ignoring the systems that produce them. We treat the fever without diagnosing the infection. The result is a generation of young people cycling through institutions that hand them authority without preparation, assign them responsibility without formation, and then express shock when power is misused.
According to UNICEF, approximately 246 million children and adolescents experience school violence and bullying globally every year. In sub-Saharan Africa, between 30 and 60 percent of students report experiencing peer victimisation, with Nigeria consistently among the most affected. These are not fringe statistics. They are a systemic indictment. And yet our response remains reactive.
Bullying Is Not The Problem. It Is The Evidence.
Let me be direct about something the public conversation has consistently missed.
Bullying is not a behaviour problem. It is a leadership problem.
At its core, bullying is the misuse of power. It is what happens when influence operates without restraint, when authority exists without accountability, and when the capacity to affect others is exercised without empathy or consequence. These are not character flaws that emerge suddenly. They are leadership failures that develop gradually in environments where no one taught the alternative.
Dr. Kenneth Blanchard argued that the most dangerous leader is not the incompetent one — it is the one who was never taught what leadership actually means. Give a person power before formation and you do not get a leader. You get a threat. That is what is happening in our schools. And we are acting surprised.
The Assumption That Is Costing Us
Walk into almost any Nigerian secondary school and you will find a student leadership structure; prefects, class captains, house officers. These exist with good intent. But they are built on assumptions so flawed they quietly undermine the outcomes they are meant to produce.
That leadership is inherent. That academic excellence translates to leadership capacity. That seniority equals maturity. That a title automatically confers responsibility. None of these are true.
The result is young people placed in positions of authority over their peers — with real power to reward, punish, and influence, without a single structured hour of preparation for what that authority demands.
Imagine this. You are fifteen years old. You have just been appointed senior prefect. Your badge is pinned. Your peers applaud. Your parents are proud. And nobody, not one adult in that institution sits you down to explain what power feels like from the inside, or why it must be managed carefully. Nobody teaches you the difference between authority that serves and authority that dominates. Nobody prepares you for the moment a junior student challenges your instruction and every instinct says respond with force rather than wisdom.
You are fifteen. You have been given power. And you have been given no map for it.
This is not a fictional scenario. This is the daily reality of student leadership across thousands of Nigerian secondary schools. And in that vacuum, that space where formation should be but isn’t; bullying does not erupt. It evolves. Quietly. Gradually.
Research from the Journal of School Violence confirms that schools with structured peer leadership training report up to 43 percent fewer incidents of student-on-student aggression. The data is clear. The solution exists. What is missing is the will.
A badge is not a formation. A title is not a training. A position is not a preparation.
The Pipeline Nobody Is Talking About
The implications extend far beyond the school gate.
Schools are not simply academic institutions. They are the most structured environments where the next generation of Nigerians learn what power looks and feels like. Where attitudes toward authority are formed. Where the instinct to lead or to dominate — is either disciplined or left to run wild.
The society we critique every day is being formed in the systems we overlook every day.
When a student learns that authority is exercised through intimidation, and the system never corrects it — that lesson travels. Into the workplace. Into institutions. Into organisations that will eventually be led by that student. This is how the leadership gap in classrooms becomes the accountability crisis in boardrooms. This is how what looks like a school problem becomes a national character problem. We are not just failing our students. We are building the society we say we do not want.
From Appointment To Formation — What Must Change
The question is not whether this can be fixed. It can. The question is whether we are serious enough about the future to fix it now. What is required is a fundamental shift from appointment to formation.
Before any student receives a leadership role, they should complete a structured programme covering the ethics of authority, conflict resolution, peer accountability, and the difference between power that serves and power that dominates. Every student leader should be paired with a trained adult mentor not to monitor academic performance, but to ask: how are you using your authority this week? Where did you fall short? What will you do differently?
Clear boundaries for authority must be established and communicated explicitly. And accountability must be consistent swift, fair, and educational rather than purely punitive.
Schools in Rwanda piloted national student leadership formation programmes from 2012 as part of a post-conflict education reform agenda. Early evaluations showed measurable improvements in peer relations and disciplinary outcomes within three years. Intentional formation produces different outcomes than assumption alone.
A Word To Every Stakeholder
To school principals, the change begins with you. Not with a memo. With a decision. Begin with orientation before appointment. Make formation the prerequisite, not the afterthought.
To parents, ask not “what position did my child get?” but “what training does your school provide for student leaders?” If the answer is vague, push for better.
To policymakers, structured leadership development must move from optional enhancement to national standard. The cost of inaction, measured not in naira but in the character of the next generation, is one Nigeria cannot afford.
To young leaders, your badge is not your identity. The students in your care are not beneath you. Lead them like it.
The Last Word
Bullying is not the root problem. It is the fever. The infection is a leadership gap growing quietly in institutions we trust with our children every single day. What we fail to build in our schools today, we will not just confront.
We will become.
The children in those classrooms are the leaders, managers, and policymakers of the next twenty years. What we build in them now is what Nigeria will be made of then.
The gap is real. The solution is available. The moment is now. We either build intentionally or pay the price of assumption.
Coach Daniel Owoyemi is a leadership coach, broadcaster, and convener of the Built to Build Initiative — a platform dedicated to intentional leadership development.
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