Pupil dies after slap from principal’s secretary (Photos)

Nine months after, the family of Miss Iyanuoluwa Dahunsi are still haunted by the incident that led to their daughter’s tragic, but preventable death.

The late pupil, then an SS2 pupil of Bishop Philip Academy, Ibadan, Oyo State, was hospitalised after she was reportedly slapped by Mrs. Funke Fashina, who was then the secretary to the school’s principal, on January 29, 2015.

Dahunsi developed an eye problem that same day. And despite frequent visits to different hospitals for treatment and medication, the affected eyeball kept bulging out every day.

Although Fashina was later arrested and charged to court for the slap, the affected pupil, sadly, never recovered from it.

Barely six months later, and five days after her fifteenth birthday, Dahunsi died on July 22, 2015 at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.

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. On her birthday on July 17, she requested that I cooked fresh fish for her, but she could barely eat it. She suffered so much before her death.”

Due to a mounting hospital bill estimated to be more than N1m, her corpse was not released at the morgue to her family until Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi intervened seven months later.

As a result, the late Dahunsi, who was the older of her parent’s two children, was only buried on February 12, 2016.

However, in an unexpected twist, last  Thursday, Orindare-Ajayi, who spoke on behalf of the deceased’s mother, said the process of withdrawing the case from court had begun, and even though the date of the next hearing was scheduled for April 29.

Orindare-Ajayi noted that the intervention of Governor Ajimobi and the fact that no favourable ruling from the court would bring back their daughter made the family to consider withdrawing the case from the court.

Their decision to withdraw the case from court nevertheless, the late pupil’s aunt said the family are still bearing the pain from the events that led to her hospitalisation and death.

She said, “She was always with me and even when the incident happened, she was living with me. Her mother is my sister. That was why I referred to her as my daughter.”

-Punch