How the punishment of a teacher inspired a visually impaired man to secure his future through education

Abdul Fatawu Iddrisu Kpadau, a visually impaired trained teacher from the Wa Municipality of the Upper West Region has been narrating how a corporal punishment by a teacher that nearly truncated his education rather inspired him to succeed through education.


Mr. Abdul-Fatawu who is married with two kids recounting his childhood days said growing up as a child, he never regarded education as an avenue that could help him make it in life but only viewed the school environment as a mere play or recreational ground.

According to him, this notion he harbored would later change after something dramatic happened which marked a turning point in his life during his final year at the Junior High School level. He recounted how he was wrongly accused of insulting a Senior House Mother of the Wa Methodist School for the Blind where he attended his basic education.

He said as a result, he was subjected to a severe caning of 32 lashes by one Mr. Kwame K. Appiah, a Science teacher of the school at the time. He alleged Mr. Kwame refused telling him the purported insults he was alleged to have rained on a tutor before administering the punishment when he sort to know the crime he had committed that warranted the caning.

Abdul-Fatawu Kpadau alias The Proud Blind man, as he prefers to be called, alleged teacher Kwame K. Appiah eventually gave him 32 strokes of the cake instead of the initial 64 strokes the teacher earlier threatened to inflict on him.

He claimed this made him demand the remaining 32 lashes be added to affirm the threat else, God would not forgive he, the teacher. He said, this infuriated the teacher to ban him from attending his lessons until he wrote his BECE which he claimed led to his failure in the examination.

"So he gave me 32 canes (strokes of lashing) and I was holding a pillar while he was lashing me. So when he got to the 32 sort of caning (32 mark), he said it was okay and I said no, he told me he was going to lash me 64 (strokes) and I was ready to receive the 64 so he should continue with the 32 to make it 64. Or else, God wouldn't forgive him .

"So he got furious and said that I insulted him. I said no I'm not insulting you because the crime that you said I committed, I didn't commit it. "...So he said it's (the caning) okay, but I said if he didn't continue it God won't forgive him. So he said if that's what I have said, then, I should never attend his class again," he narrated.

He noted that this singular act by Mr. Kwame which perhaps was meant to break him down, rather served as a catalyst to make him become who he is today as he challenged himself to rise through education so that he could sue the teacher one day when was in the position to do so.

"So it frustrated me to the extent that I failed. I failed totally not only in his paper (subject) because I was demoralized. So after that I said no, I have to do something. And what I planned on doing is that I said, I would go back to school, find a job (after completing school) and sue K. K. Appiah at the court for having abused my rights because I realized he had really abused my rights," he recounted.

Peace Man, as he is also known, noted that when he was at the university, he initiated steps in order to fulfil his dream of suing the teacher having consulted a lawyer.

However, he said upon sober reflection after heared a colleague weep for failing in his examination, he decided to abandon the idea having come to the realization that perhaps, but for the punishment he suffered in the hands of teacher Kwame K Appiah, he might not have been inspired enough to take education seriously so as to climb high the educational ladder.


He said as a little boy who lost his sight when he was about 3 years old, his parents ensured they enrolled him in school to give him a better independent future. He continued his education at the Wa Senior High School, then to the Wa Nusrat Jahan Training Collage for a Diploma in Education.

He later went on to obtain a Bachelors of Social Studies at the University Education of Winneba and is currently stationed at the Fallahia Islamic Junior High School at Mamponteng in the Ashanti Region.

The 38-year-old who is widely known as an intelligent physically handicapped person by locals is also regarded as a true representation of the adage that says that "disability does not mean inability."