Consequences Of Child Abuse On Students Academic Performance As Perceived By Secondary School Teachers
[A CASE STUDY OF ILORIN METROPOLIS]

Although these programme have been brought to abrupt halt due to series of political changes and the present adverse economic conditions, nevertheless, many state government still endeavour to give financial aids to their students and educational institutions. State governments have come up with various policies as regards admission, administration, duration of programmes and so on. Presently, education has been made compulsory for children at the basic level and every child is encouraged to take the opportunity of acquiring at least basic education up to the junior secondary level by some state governments. All these are efforts made to protect the basic rights of children. The question is, are they utilizing the opportunity maximally? In the traditional African society, the training of the child was the sole responsibility and the members of the community who had the right to discipline and correct the child whenever they went wrong. The parent trained the child in a way that is suitable and acceptable to the standard of the society. Following the advent of western education and the introduction of nursery and pre-primary school, parent tend to give the responsibility of guiding, directing, counseling and role modeling of the children to the school.
Thus, putting more demands on the school to do what the parent should do in addition to their normal school function. Parents now push over the responsibility of caring for their children to the school. Many young children who would have been at home at about two years have been pushed over to the school. The tasks thus become enormous for the teachers and the school management to carry leading to many children being neglected, despised and abused on a daily basis. This clearly undermines the provision for the right of the child ‘on protection against indecent and inhuman treatment like abuse and neglect’ earlier stated. Rather the child has been subjected to all kinds of maltreatment, is not protected, and valued defended. Most time, the treatment meted out to young children as corrective measures constitute one form of abuse or the other. It is evident that child abuse is a serious global, that is deeply rooted in cultural, economic and social practices and occurs in a variety of ways and places.
According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data system (NCANDA, 2006) reported by Gelles (2009) in the United State for instance, more then 900,000 children suffer die severe or life threatening injury and (1,000 to 2,000) children die as a result of abuse and those who survive often suffer emotional trauma that may take long for the bruises to be healed. In the same vein, our Nigerian society is still plagued with incidences of child labour, child maltreatment, child marriage, child trafficking, neglect and child prostitution. The effect of such abuse are many and varied, teenage pregnancies, youth restiveness and violence, cultism, youth decadence, and joblessness , armed bandits, molestation, and school dropout have eaten into the life of most Nigerian children.
These abuse take place not only at home and undertaken by persons known to and trusted by the child, but also in the school where the child spends a greater part of his/ her early life. In most literature, child abuse is studied to the home and the society. Few authors have to look into the child as it relate with the school system. The fact that the society has a strong belief  in education system (School) in the task of helping children develop their abilities, attitudes, values and good judgment  may make one not to think of child abuse as occurring in the school. yet, incidence of abuse abound in school and sometime in subtle way unknown to the school authorities but at the same time posing serious dangers to children at the same time having damaging far more consequence on the life the child. If the school, which is supposed to be a custodian of knowledge as well as functioning as an avenue for the optimum development of the child fosters and indulges in child abuse, then one wonders how children will benefit from the process of education.
The question one is bound to ask is why there are still incidence of child abuse in the school? Is it that the school authorities do not understand what constitute child abuse or overlook the abuse since they in our culture? What are the implications of child abuse to the educational system? It is in answering to these questions that this paper sets out to discuss the incidence of child abuse and its impact of the educational system in Nigeria.
What is Child Abuse?
There is no generally accepted definition of child abuse as a result of differences in the perception of what generally is acceptable as abusive or not. The African network for prevention and protection against child abuse and neglect (ANPPCAN, 2006), defines, child abuse as “the intention, on intention or well intention acts which endanger the physical health, emotional, more and the education welfare of children. Child abuse can be seen as any act of omission or commission, physical or psychological mistreatment or neglect of a child by its parents, guardians, caregiver or other adults.
In the definition, wrongfully maltreating a child or selfishly making an unfair use of a child services responsible for the child constitutes child abuse. Thus adult may not be directly related to the child but a person in whose the child is left can be an abuser. This may include the educators, healthcare workers, day-care workers, or other responsible adults (child welfare information gateway, 2008).