A Nigerian at UNR With Goals of Becoming a Doctor, Survived a Harsh Boarding School Back Home
Lily Wright reports on a Nigerian student who survived a brutal Nigerian school in Port Harcourt and now aspires to attend medical school at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Chiji Akarolo was eleven years old attending the Nigerian Navy Secondary School of Port Harcourt when he was instructed to “hang” from the bunks in the dormitory of the school, a typical group punishment he had done many times before.
This time, however, he remembers being struck on the back by an older student for improper form, collapsing to the ground, and being unable to recover as he suffered an asthma attack.
While he is glad to no longer attend the boarding school, Akarolo also remembers his time there fondly including the many friends he made.
Here in Nevada, where he now studies chemistry at UNR, he reflects on his complicated academic experience spanning across Nigeria and Nevada, where he initially experienced culture shock.
From the ages of 10 to 12, Akarolo attended the intimidating Nigerian Navy Secondary School of Port Harcourt, a military style boarding school designed for Nigerian children with behavioral issues aged 10 to 16 years old.
Akarolo was sent to the boarding school following a series of behavioral issues and a reputation for bullying while attending his public elementary school in Port Harcourt, a bustling city driven by oil revenue.
The final straw would occur in the fourth grade when Akarolo repeatedly hit a classmate during recess. It was the culmination of many instances of fighting throughout his elementary years.
At the Nigerian Navy Secondary School, students lived in rooms with sets of metal bunk beds with 23 junior students and eight senior students per room.
Punishments were held outside and conducted by both teachers and senior students.
“At boarding school they find new ways to punish you,” Akarolo remembers.
“They made us roll around in sand and poured water on us and they were hitting us with wire hangers. They made us chant Nigerian sea shanties. If you didn’t sing, you got whipped. There was a thing called hanging where you would hang from the top of the bunks and they would whip your back.”
Despite the intense punishments and difficult living conditions of the boarding school, Akarolo still considers it a positive experience and a program he was sad to leave because he appreciated the freedom it gave him from his strict family. He looked forward to completing the program and the chance to move up in the hierarchy of students.
“That was the only thing I looked forward to when I was there, like I just have to get through this and through the six years and it’s going to be worth it when I get to the top,” he said, speaking inside Sierra Hall at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he now works a dozen hours a week as a community desk attendant.
“I would have loved to stay until the end,” he says remembering his time at the Nigerian boarding school. “I see videos my friends are posting and I think I would have been really happy. Those first three years I was never happy.”
Still, Akarolo struggled mentally and lost a significant amount of weight in his three years spent there.
Unexpectedly, Akarolo was unenrolled from the school without retrieving his belongings and moved to begin his sophomore year of high school at Desert Oasis High School in Las Vegas in the fall of 2019.
He learned of the move to the United States during the summer of 2019 while home for summer break. His parents made the difficult decision to move themselves and six of their children from Nigeria to Las Vegas for free public education and the better opportunities the U.S. offered.
Akarolo would have to reintegrate himself into a public school atmosphere after three years in a rigorous program designed to reform unruly students. It was an unwelcome transition and he was not prepared to leave the environment of the boarding school.
“It was kind of like Stockholm Syndrome, I couldn’t really separate myself from it,” says Akarolo regarding his feelings on leaving the boarding school.
Not only did moving from a boarding school to a public day school pose challenges to adapt for Akarolo, but moving from Nigeria to the United States made the transition even more difficult. Language barriers, different social norms, and a new routine made his experience moving to the U.S. challenging. Akarolo was also two years younger than his 15-year-old sophomore classmates due to having skipped the second and sixth grades in Nigeria.
“It was really really different. It was awful. I cried,” Akarolo says of his start as a student in Las Vegas. “I think I cried for like two days, probably more than that. My first two semesters I ate alone, sometimes I ate outside, sometimes I ate my lunch in the bathroom. It was really depressing. I couldn’t really talk to anyone because it was really hard to understand me because my accent was really, really thick.”
Akarolo says his experience of loneliness during his transition to an American high school was comparable to the physical hardships experienced while attending boarding school in Nigeria.
The harsh disciplinary actions that are common in Nigeria result in very different social norms and behavioral patterns compared to those seen in Las Vegas high schools. Akarolo was shocked to witness students freely talk back to teachers at Desert Oasis High School.
“In Nigeria, I witnessed a male teacher punch a girl for talking back to him. Like a closed fist punch. I feel like some level of discipline would be beneficial, but not to the level it is in Nigeria. I don’t think punching a student should be happening. It was effective though. But I don’t want that kind of discipline for them,” he says.
Akarolo feels the physical demands and punishments experienced during his time at the boarding school were easier to deal with than the loneliness he felt in his first year at Desert Oasis High School.
“My experience in American schools at first was way worse for me than the boarding school,” he says. “Because at that point nothing really hurt anymore but in America I couldn’t talk to anybody and no one would talk to me. It was the loneliness.”
Now, Akarolo attends UNR majoring in Chemistry on the pre-med track. In addition to his paid job as a community desk attendant in the residence halls he volunteers as a campus tour guide. He will graduate with his bachelor’s degree in 2026 and plans to begin medical school afterward.
Akarolo is happy with his decision to pursue higher education at UNR for the freedom and opportunities he has here as well as the new friends he has made in Reno.
His time at the Nigerian Navy Secondary School and the experience of adapting to an American public high school at 13 was a difficult experience that he appreciates for what it taught him.
“It was something that I would not put my kids through but I did learn a lot from it,” Akarolo says.
“I would never go back to Nigeria. That place is awful. When I think about it, it stresses me out. I want my kids to understand the culture as much as possible and I would like to teach them the language. But I would not raise my kids there.”
