- Senate goes tough on randy dons; passes sexual abuse bill
Senator Ovie Omo-Agege was justifiably exuberant, after the senate passed the Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Education Institution Bill 2016, which he sponsored. The bill makes sexual harassment in our higher institutions a strict liability offence, and provides for five years imprisonment or five million naira in lieu, upon conviction. Addressing the press after the passage of the bill, the senator reportedly said: “Now, it is touch and go. You stay away from these girls. You touch them as a lecturer; you know there is a price to pay. Somebody describes it as a zip up legislation.”
While there are still some more efforts to get the bill to become law, we believe that most Nigerians will be excited over the prospects, considering the menace posed by randy lecturers in our higher institutions. To actualise the bill as a law, the House of Representatives would have to pass the same bill, and then the president has to give his assent. Between the passage of a similar bill by the lower house and its harmonisation, we urge the National Assembly to consider extending the law to other institutions and even the work place, considering that sexual harassment is not limited to higher institutions only.
We appreciate the unsavoury experiences of victims of sexual harassment, so criminalising such scandals is very appropriate. Some females who have been victims of sexual harassment bear the marks sometimes for life. Indeed, some of the stories surrounding the scandals in our higher institutions are very unnerving. Such heart-rending tales include the lecturers asking the victims to arrange and pay for a rendezvous for the abuse, or where the victim is adamant against such exploitation, to pay money in lieu.
But there may still be the challenge of under-reporting the threats and even the abuses by victims, because of stigmatisation and collusion by school authorities and even the police. We hear that when such cases are reported by victims, sometimes the authorities connive to bury the scandal, perhaps out of sympathy for the lecturer involved, or based on outright quid pro quo, considering that the investigating authority may also have skeletons in its own cardboard.
So, there may be the need for the senate of higher institutions and education authorities of secondary schools to develop a minimum code of conduct for their teachers and students. Such basic rules will regulate the relationship between the teachers and the students, and they should be strictly observed, while infractions are punished. For, while a law may come to regulate where the internal mechanisms fails, school authorities where they are willing may prove efficient in curbing the menace. Preventive measures will also save the institutions the scandal that will come with a trial of a lecturer, under the law.
It is also good that the bill provides a framework to punish false allegations, so that students and even rival teachers do not use the law for self-serving purposes. We hope the law, when passed, will also criminalise such potential dubious behaviour capable of ruining an honest teacher. Part of the challenge of the bill is that any relationship between a student and a teacher that results in sex automatically becomes a criminal offence, even when the parties are consenting adults.
Since the bill will still be passed by the House of Representatives, and be harmonised before it goes to the president for assent, perhaps a public hearing of the views of specialists may be helpful. Specialists in psychology, sociology and medicine could throw light on how to mediate between consent and sexual abuse that casts a slur on our institutions.
