Sad! Pupil Dies After Slap From Principal's Secretary

Photo credit: Punch Nigeria

Miss Iyanuoluwa Dahunsi’s family are yet to come to terms with the shock of her death nine months after she was ‘mistakenly’ hit on the eye by the Secretary to her school’s Principal, Mrs. Funke Fashina.

A family friend of the deceased’s family who preferred to remain anonymous narrated what happened on the day of the incident.
In her words,“We learnt that on that day (January 2015), a teacher entered her classroom and ordered those who were not taking the subject to leave. She was leaving with some of her friends when the school principal’s secretary, Mrs. Fashina, met them along the corridor.
“Instead of asking the pupils questions about their mission outside the classroom, she began to beat them one by one. In the process, her hand hit Dahunsi’s eye. She did not take it seriously but she told her aunt (Orindare-Ajayi), who she was living with at the time when she got home. Her aunt told her that she must have done something wrong which warranted the discipline.

“However, she bought eye drop and applied it to the affected eye. There was mid-term break at the time but before the school resumed again, the eye had gone worse. 

The mother visited the school to demand for what Fashina used to slap her daughter. There was an argument over the issue but when her father also visited the school, it was resolved that a test be carried out at an optical laboratory in Eleta area of Ibadan.”
He said the result showed there was a fracture around the eye, which also resulted in clotting of blood around the affected area. He noted that the principal and Fashina rejected the result because it implicated the woman who had slapped Dahunsi.

The family friend added, “They said they had someone at the University College Hospital and demanded that another test be carried out at the UCH. According to the new scan result, a tumour was detected and that it was not as a result of the slapping. The consultant said the sum of N300,000 was needed to do a surgery. The result was in the custody of the principal and Fashina.
“The parents agreed that the surgery be done, but the necessary document needed by the hospital was not released by the principal and the secretary. The police had to be involved before the document was released three days after. By then, the girl had suffered so much.”

The surgery was later carried out after the Chief Medical Director of UCH, Prof. Temitope Alonge, was notified by Dahunsi’s aunt but it only got worse.
An aunt to the late pupil, Mrs. Yetunde Orindare-Ajayi, recalled, “A few days before Dahunsi’s death, she was referred to the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, but she died on the day we were to travel there. She died in my hands at the hospital”.

Until her death, Iyanuoluwa suffered from a swollen head, inability to walk and was also using adult diapers.
Six months later, and five days after her fifteenth birthday, Dahunsi succumbed to the cold hands of death on July 22, 2015 at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. She was however buried quite late on February 12, 2016 due to accumulated hospital bills estimated at N1m.

May her soul, rest in peace.


DashPlace at 11:43am