Nigeria Senate Passes Bill Seeking To Curb Sexual Harassment On Campuses

Nigerian Senate Sexual Harassment Bill Passage

A bill by the Nigerian parliament’s upper house to curb sexual harassment on university campuses – which carries jail sentences of up to five years for offenders – has successfully passed a second reading. A third and final reading of the bill is expected soon.

A section of the university community and non-governmental organisations have thrown their weight behind the Senate bill.

But lecturers are proposing fundamental amendments to make it an all-inclusive law that ensures the protection of girls and women on and off campuses from all kinds of sexual harassment.

The bill

Unknown to the public or university community, Ovie Omo-Agege, a senator in the upper chamber of parliament, quietly mobilised colleagues across party lines to support his bill titled the Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Institutions Bill 2016.

In the mobilisation process, he provided facts and figures and video clips revealing how some lecturers in public and private universities were brazenly engaging in illicit sexual intercourse with female students.

In a plenary session of the Senate, Omo-Agege asserted that philandering lecturers were able to rampage on campuses with impunity, debasing female students – even some who were married – and inflicting psychological trauma on those who refused to yield to their advances.

He described a gradual collapse of cultural values on campuses, with some of those who are supposed to mentor students instead abusing them.

Omo-Agege argued that existing laws on sexual abuse were not effective or serving as a deterrent. The position proposed in the bill was that the ability of female students to give voluntary consent to sexual relations with lecturers was compromised. “There is a need to stop the immorality."

One crucial clause in the bill is that an educator will be “guilty of committing an offence of sexual harassment against a student if he/she has sexual intercourse with a student who is less than 18 years of age; has sexual intercourse with a student or demands sex from a student or a prospective student as a condition to study in an institution, or as a condition to the giving of a passing grade or the granting of honour and scholarships”.

Regarding punishment, the bill states: “Any person who commits any of the acts specified in Section 4 of this Act is guilty of an offence and shall, on conviction, be sentenced to imprisonment of up to five years, but not less than two years without any option of a fine.”

More than half of Omo-Agege colleagues were sufficiently convinced that the bill had merit. But there were some discordant voices from senators who believed it should be more inclusive and not targeted only at university lecturers.

Yahaya Aliyu called for a broad-based law against sexual harassment and not one aimed at only one section of Nigerians. “If we are to make laws against sexual harassment, we should do it across the board. Targeting one section of society is discriminatory,” he said.

And there were some conservative views. Senator Dino Melaye believed harassment was a two-way street. While he “wholeheartedly” supported the bill as a deterrent to lecturers, “the seductive and provocative dressing mode of female students who enter indiscriminately into the offices of lecturers should be discouraged”.

American university president speaks out

The influential Nigerian tabloid The Guardian reported that Professor Margee Ensign, president of the American University of Nigeria in Yola in the north-west, had declared support for the bill and called on other vice-chancellors to do the same.

Ensign told The Guardian’s Eno-Abasi that her six-year sojourn in Nigeria had revealed a culture in some places “where girls are deemed ‘free game’”.

“She deplored a situation where some male faculty members feel they are imbued with the powers to sexually harass and abuse female students in their classes, stressing that the situation was completely reprehensible and abhorrent.”

Lecturers unhappy

But a large proportion of lecturers have rejected a section of the bill that they have termed ‘inquisitive’ and dangerous.

A section reads that an educator will also be guilty if he or she “grabs, hugs or strokes or touches or pinches the breasts or hair or lips or hips or buttocks or any other sensual part of the body of a student; displays, gives or sends by hand or courier or electronic or any other means unclad or sexually explicit pictures or videos or sex-related objects to a student, or whistles or winks at a student or screams or exclaims or jokes or makes sexually complimentary or uncomplimentary remarks about a student’s physique”.

The bill reminded Dr Adewale Suenu, vice-chair of the Lagos State University branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities or ASUU, of the inquisition of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, he said, because a section enabled any student – male or female – to verbally accuse any lecturer of sexual abuse. “We must reject this law as long as it is not all-inclusive.”

According to reliable sources, newly elected ASUU National President Professor Biodun Ogunyemi has assembled a team of lawyers to study the bill and its ramifications in detail, with a view to presenting the union’s position to senate before the third reading.