Lecturer-student power imbalance: New bill to the rescue

The Sexual Harassment Prohibition Bill, 2016 which scaled through second reading on the floor of the Senate house may redress the lecturer-student power imbalance. The bill makes it a criminal offence for any educator in a university, polytechnic or any other tertiary educational institution who violates or exploits the lecturer-student fiduciary relationship for sexual pleasures.

The bill makes it mandatory for any vice chancellor, provost and rector of a university, polytechnic and college of education to promptly act on the report of any sexual harassment by a female student, failing which it said such authority would be jailed for two years. The bill imposes stiff penalties on offending lecturers of a compulsory five-year jail term.

In 2012 the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) in collaboration with the National Universities Commission (NUC) commissioned a pilot University System Study and Review (USSR). This study identified a number of infractions including admissions racketeering, misapplication and embezzlement of funds, sale of examination questions lack of commitment to work by lecturers and above all sexual harassment and exploitation of students by lecturers.

Ekpo Nta, ICPC chairman was reported as saying “we have uncovered many corrupt practices in our universities. Sexual harassment seems to rank extremely very high among corrupt practices in our universities. Our report is based on the quantum of petitions we have received on this corrupt practice. We’re emphasizing this because sexual harassment has to do with the immediate challenge we need to address”

Experts say a picture emerging from extensive research of such harassment shows it has less to do sex than with power. It is a way to keep women and in this case female students through harassment in their place. While sexual harassment may on first glance be taken as simple social ineptness or as an awkward expression of romantic attraction, researchers say that view is wrong and pernicious because it can lead women who suffer harassment to blame themselves, believing that something in their dress or behaviour might have brought the unwanted attention.

Odunayo Arogundade, head of department, Behavioural Studies/senior lecturer at Redeemer’s University told BusinessDay that the scope of the Bill needs to be enlarged. This is because, it focuses singularly on lecturers. “I admit some lecturers might be guilty of such improprieties as stated in the Bill and would need some form of psychotherapy to help them deal with the disorder” he said.

Arogundade emphasised the objective of the Bill would be incomplete if it does not address the other component of the equation, namely, the dress code of female students. “Some of these girls come in as adolescents in search of one kind of adventure or another. Some of them have never left home. When they find themselves on a university campus, some of them a carried away by the degree of freedom found on these university campuses, believe me, some of these female students consciously dress and use body language to  attract academic favour in exchange for sex.”

Juliet Okafor, a final year student of Biology Education at the University of Jos, said “I don’t know of anyone who has been sexually harassed by a lecturer, those I know of wanted it and that is not harassment. I mean they liked it”.

Ibilola Sokan, a graduate of the University of Port-Harcourt, linguistics and communication department narrated an ordeal that took place in her 200 level with a lecturer. She said the lecturer made it clear to her that not giving in to his sexual advances meant an outright ‘carryover’. This, she said put her through enormous psychological trauma. “By some twist of luck, the lecturer lost his dad and this made him become much more sober about life, and he decided the world was filled with vanity and life only a breath, not many female students would have this kind of luck” she said.

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU