For almost three decades, I have worked within the school system with parents of diverse backgrounds and persuasions, beginning with my first visit to Aladura Comprehensive High School, Anthony Village, Lagos, in 1997.

Over the years, I have handled cases and heard accounts, both firsthand and through parents, schools, child-focused organizations, and government agencies that range from the merely unreasonable to the outright impossible. With time, I have come to see that even the strangest incidents can teach sober lessons about the delicate triangle of responsibility among schools, parents, and the children we are all meant to safeguard and protect.

These stories are not peculiar to Africa or the so-called Third World. However, it is important to acknowledge a hard reality: in Nigeria and in many African countries, the average primary parent is often left to raise children with little meaningful support.

By global standards, four institutions share responsibility for raising children: parents (who primarily inculcate values), community (which reinforces values and builds supportive institutions), the state (which provides an enabling social, political, and economic environment, including social protection), and the international community (which upholds global standards through international legal instruments and established protocols).

In Nigeria, the community system has weakened, the state is largely comatose in its duty of care, the international community is inconsistent, and parents are frequently left alone, pressured, raising their children as citizens of their families, yet effectively stateless. It is against this backdrop that I share my field experiences below: not to excuse error, but to provide necessary context for understanding how these failures happen, and what must change.

Consider the mother who sent her child to school with eba, but without soup. When the school called to ask about the missing component of the meal, her response was matter-of-fact: she had noticed there was no soup after packing the food and planned to send a note asking the school to locate the nearest eatery, buy “just a little okro or vegetable,” and add it so her child could eat. Absurd? Yes. Real? Also yes.

Or the parent who instructed the school to drop her 12-year-old daughter at the estate gate because “the security guards know her.” “Just drop her there; she’ll be fine. I’ll pick her up later,” she said, apparently unbothered by the obvious risk of leaving a girl child with male security men, strangers, unsupervised at a gate.

Then there was the parent who arrived late to pick up her child. The school’s policy was clear: late pickup attracts a fee. Instead of accepting responsibility, she tore up the invoice in front of staff, and in front of her own child, and threw the pieces into the trash, as though rules were optional when applied to her.

Sometimes the problem is not unreasonable demands but outright deception. In one case, a child admitted that a teacher had been coming to the house for private lessons, strictly against the school’s policy. When confronted, the parent looked both the teacher and her own child in the eye and denied everything. The child stood there, confused and embarrassed, watching a blatant lie unfold in real time, left to reconcile truth with the authority of a parent who refused to own it.

Some scenarios move beyond absurd into deeply troubling territory. In a highbrow boarding school, a matron was found to have ordered young students to clean human waste and even taste it. When a brave child reported the incident, her mother’s response was chillingly indifferent: “The matron has been warned. It won’t happen again.” No outrage. No demand for accountability. Just resignation. When asked if she would withdraw her child from such an environment, she said, “We’re too busy to change schools. He’ll be fine.”

Another case still haunts me. During an international exam administered through the British Council, a child wrote a desperate plea in the margins of her test paper: “I’m being sexually abused. Please help me.” That cry for rescue led to her being traced and, thankfully, the situation was addressed. But how many children suffer in silence before they find a way, any way to be heard?

And then there was the parent who insisted that a school admit her child despite a serious medical condition, when it was obvious the school had no capacity to care for the child, even signing an indemnity letter to absolve the school if anything happened. But no indemnity can erase a school’s duty of care. Yet some parents behave as though a signature can suspend responsibility—and even suspend the law.

Two more incidents illustrate the same disturbing truth: many adults underestimate risk until it becomes tragedy.

A mother went to an ATM, leaving her four-year-old in the car because she believed it would be “a brief transaction.” She returned, got into the car, and drove off, miles without checking the back seat. Only after getting home did she discover her daughter was missing. When she raced back, she found the child with a male security guard. What happened? While the mother was at the ATM, the child crawled out of the car to ease herself, and a security man had helped her across the road to use a restroom. The mother had driven away without noticing. This happened.

In another case, two parents had met only once or twice at a PTA meeting. One was a caterer; the other had ordered cookies. When the buyer arrived at the agreed pickup point, the caterer, suddenly late for an engagement, dumped her two young children (about five and seven) on this near-stranger and pleaded: “Please, I’m extremely late. Take them to their grandmother’s address inside the estate. I’ll call her now.” A parent handed over her children, her treasure to someone she barely knew.

Perhaps the most heart-wrenching example came from a mother whose five-year-old daughter reported sexual abuse by a nine-year-old neighbor. When asked if she would stop sending her child to that neighbor’s home, her answer was staggering: “Where else will she go? She still goes there.” The casual acceptance of danger in a child’s life is not just shocking, it is devastating.

These stories are stranger than fiction, but they are also mirrors: experiences we have touched, witnessed, and handled firsthand.

They reveal how much work remains in our understanding of parenting, child safeguarding, and protection. If children are truly a priority, we will know it by three measures: time, energy, and sacrifice.

Through all these experiences, one truth stands out: what parents cannot do, does not exist. Whether driven by desperation, confusion, entitlement, fear, or misplaced priorities, some parents will ask, and do things that test the very limits of reason and responsibility.

For primary parents, let us strive to do better by seeking and investing in:
• Knowledge (what to do),
• Skill (how to do it), and
• Fortitude (the inner strength to follow through).

For secondary parents, educators and school leaders, the mandate is clear: respond with wisdom, enforce boundaries without apology, and keep the best interests of the child at the center of every decision, no matter how “impossible” the request may seem.

These things are written for examples.

As a parent, what is the most bizarre thing you have seen? As a professional, what is the most jaw-dropping case you have handled?

Let’s discuss, learn, and defend the best interests of our precious children.

And if you want to take this conversation further, join The TeacherFire® Revolution PTA Forum via the link in the comments.

Every revolution starts with a conversation, and every conversation starts with a person, any one of us, who is ready to take responsibility.

Do have an INSPIRED weekend with the family.