How nigerian universities encourage sexual harassments of female students

When Blessing, a 300-level
undergraduate female student of
the Sociology Department,
University of Lagos, approached
one of her lecturers for extra
tutorial on a problematic module,
she did not bargain to be the
object of the lecturer’s sexual
fancy.
“He didn’t even bother to explain
the topic to me. Maybe he
thought I was flirting with him
but I’m sure I did not leave that
impression,” said Blessing, who

1. refused to allow the use of her

actual names.
Soon, the lecturer started inviting
her to beer parlours outside the
campus. Blessing said she
initially responded out of respect
but I stopped answering the
lecturer’s phone calls the day he
tried to touch her breast in
public. She completely avoided
him after the man asked her to
meet him at a guesthouse in
Palmgroove, in Lagos.
That was when all hell broke
loose, she told PREMIUM TIMES
in a recent interview.
Blessing claimed she was
deliberately picked on and
embarrassed in class, and at the
end of the semester, despite her
best effort, she was scored D by
the lecturer.
“Because of what happened, I
tried my best and I’m sure I
would have scored at least 60 (B)
from what I wrote but he decided
to punish me by scoring me 45.”
Blessing seemed lucky as
thousands of mostly female
university students in Nigeria
have faced even worse situations
at the hands of philandering
lecturers, other university staff
and even fellow students, anti-
sexual harassment campaigners
say.
Some lecturers have failed
students repeatedly until they
yielded to their sexual demands.
Students who would not
compromise have been harassed
out of school.
Well-known assailants have
raped others with little attempt
by university authorities to
apprehend the attackers.
Joy Ezeilo, the Executive Director of Women’s
Aid Collective and a lecturer at the University
of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, told PREMIUM
TIMES the story of a female student who was
chased into a classroom in a university and
snatched away in the full glare of everyone to
be raped by her assailants. No one raised a
finger to protect her.
She also narrated the story of a lecturer who
was nicknamed “Kiss-me-and-pass” because
he often asked female students to kiss him if
they wanted better grades.
Despite the prevalence of sexual harassment
and sexual assaults in Nigerian universities,
PREMIUM TIMES investigation, which
involved talking to students from at least
eight universities, administrators, lecturers,
members of university academic union from
across Nigeria, revealed a near total neglect of
the issue and lack of will to even discuss it.
In many cases, lecturers and other employees
who were indicted were merely told to go and
sin no more. Apart from few cases involving
well-connected students, hardly do Nigerian
universities fire lecturers for sexually
harassing female students.
Universities, including privately owned
institutions, have also unilaterally rejected
calls by campaigners and human rights
activists to implement sexual harassment
policies as a means of tackling the problem.
Almost all the students who spoke to
PREMIUM TIMES claimed that they have
either been sexually harassed or know
another student who had been harassed by a
lecturer or other university staff.
Many of them confessed that they were
neither aware of where to go nor whom to
approach when lecturers or male students
harassed them. All of them expressed a lack
of faith in the ability or willingness of their
university management to provide justice in
cases of sexual harassment and sexual
assault. Almost all the students who claimed
to have been sexually harassed said they
feared being victimised if they reported.
“I did not report because nothing would come
out it. Also, there will be further problems for
me, maybe from other lecturers who are also
doing that. Then, my boyfriend said I should
not report. As I didn’t agree to sleep with the
man, he failed me and I am still carrying the
course till now,” said Hamzat Kaothar, a third
year Banking student of the University of
Abuja.
“I don’t have confidence in the school system,
not to talk of the department. And that’s it if
you ask anybody. Lecturers go unpunished
after abusing students and refusal even leads
to failure. But I think the new Vice Chancellor
is bringing discipline to the school.”
Another victim of sexual harassment, Chinelo
Emenike, a Business Administration student
at the Imo State University, said she reported
the attack to her Head of Department who
“did not even think it was a big deal”.
Except for the University of Port Harcourt,
sexual harassment, references to sexual
exploitation of students or how they might
seek redress was not mentioned in any of the
sampled institutions’ handbook, universities’
primary source of information, guidelines and
policies.
Even UNIPORT merely glossed over the
matter. Page 1 of one of the university’s
handbook under the title: Professional Ethics
Committee Code of Conduct for Staff and
Students, lecturers were advised ’’not
victimize students for sex, ethnic, religious or
personal reasons.’’
In the same vein students were warned “not
offer money, sex or other enticement in
exchange for higher grade or alteration/
forgery of record/documents.”
Nothing was said about the punishment to be
meted out on defaulting lecturers and how
students could possibly get justice if harassed
by staff of the university.
Though the University of Lagos students’
handbook did not say anything about sexual
harassment and students said they were not
told anything specifically about sexual
harassment, the institution however has an
emergency helpline (012902989) which
students can call if they got into any form of
trouble. The number, however, was not
functional during the investigation for this
story.
All the students who spoke to us also said
sexual harassment was not mentioned during
orientation. Blessing Eshaleku, a Linguistics
student at the University of Jos, said students
were only told to avoid dressing in manners
that make them susceptible to harassment
from lecturers and other male students.
The Student Affairs departments of all the
universities in this survey refused to respond
to our requests for information about how
sexual harassment is handled and measures
put in place to deter lecturers from leeching
on female students. They also could not
provide data on the number of complaints
they received from students and how many
lecturers have been sanctioned in the past for
sexual related offences.
A senior employee of the Student Affairs
department of the University of Abuja, who
pleaded not to be mentioned because he did
not obtain the Vice Chancellor’s approval to
talk to the press, confessed that though things
are beginning to change, there are no strong
mechanisms in place to address the problem.
He also blamed students for not coming
forward to report lecturers and admitted that
this could be for a lack of confidence in the
university to provide justice.
Similarly, the Academic Staff Union of
Universities has done nothing to rein its
members in. The union has no mechanism in
place to tackle the issue and penalise erring
members.
The Chairman of the Lagos State University
(LASU) chapter of ASUU, Adekunle Idris, said
though the National Executive Council of
ASUU is now planning to push the matter to
the front burner, he admitted that all the
union has been doing was to merely appeal to
lecturers to desist from the act.
“The truth of the matter is for now we don’t
have specific guidance in respect to sanctions.
What we are doing is to continually sensitise
our members in terms of seminars in terms of
talking to one another during our congresses
to ensure that best practises are always
adhered to during all our activities. It is only
a matter of moral suasion we are having for
now,” he said.
Taking Law into their hands
The lack of willingness of universities to
vigorously tackle sexual harassment and other
forms of sexual assaults such as sex-for-marks
coupled with a lack of faith in the system to
impartially dispense justice, have seen some
students resort to taking the law into their
hands. Some lecturers have been set up,
stripped, beaten and humiliated by students
desperate for revenge.
In 2013, a video of Ifeanyi Raphael, a lecturer
at the Delta State University, went viral on
social media. He was caught with his pants
down, literally, with a female student who
had rebuffed earlier advances from him.
The student claimed Mr. Raphael failed her
when she was in her second year after she
turned down his demands for sex. The
student who was then in her final year
approached the lecturer on how she was
going to pass the examination since she
needed to pass it before she can graduate.
As she suspected, Mr. Raphael said she must
sleep with him before he can pass her. She
arranged for him to come to her apartment
and played along until Mr. Raphael took off
his clothes then other students who had been
waiting for her signal barged in and began
taking pictures and videos of the lecturer,
which were shared all over the internet.
There are other instances of students
resorting to self-help methods like this and in
most cases; the universities try to save face
by punishing the students and the lecturers
involved.
A majority of the students who spoke to
PREMIUM TIMES said they support students
who took the law into their hands.
“Very well, I support it really. Lecturers that
abuse students should be punished by
students maybe that will let them stop. And
also since the school can’t do anything about
it, students have to fight for themselves,” said
Ms. Kaothar.
A reflection of societal decadence
Mrs. Ezeilo, who has led campaigns against
sexual harassment in institutions of tertiary
learning, said the lackadaisical handling of
the issue by universities is a reflection of the
way women are perceived in the society.
“The societal attitude and practice is to
stereotype women as sex objects- for men’s
pleasure. The social abuse thousands of
Nigerian women experience daily on the
streets, in the market place, schools and
workplaces can at best be described as sexual
harassment.”
She said sexual harassment was detrimental
to the education of the girl child.
“The society cannot be promoting girl’s
education and at the same time unmindful of
hostile environment that makes learning
difficult and/or results in high rate of female
drop-outs.”
Mrs Ezeilo, said despite the initial interest
shown by the Nigerian University Commission
and the National Human Rights Commission
towards a draft policy on sexual harassment
for university she composed, Universities
rebuffed appeal for them to adopt the policy
as a mechanism for checking sexual
harassment.
“Unfortunately, the universities were less
than keen to take it to the next level. So to
that extent we didn’t get the cooperation we
wanted from universities and since 2010 to
date nothing has changed in terms of policy
environment to protect women/female
students and indeed anyone (including male
students) from unwanted and unwelcome
demand for sexual favours by lecturers who
are supposedly in fiduciary relationship with
them.
The Chairman of the NHRC, Chidi Odinkalu,
said the increase of sexual harassment and
the attendant impunity around it mirror the
general rot of university system.
“The failure can be addressed through better
governance of our universities and the
recalibration of the incentive mechanisms of
our universities. There are major governance
failures in the way we manage our
universities. Many lecturers are not subjected
to any form of oversight or certification that
they should go through.
“The promotion mechanism these days favours
who you know or federal character rather
than your output as a lecturer. And lecturers
go through the universities not having
written one and the half reviewed articles
and think they can get away with it. Until we
create a merit based university system, which
is what universities are really supposed to be
we are going to have problems,” he said.
On what his organisation is doing to help
stem menace, Mr. Odinkalu said it would be
hypocritical for him to preach to universities
when the NHRC does not have a policy on
sexual harassment of its own yet.
“My personal issue has always been this: I’m
not particularly confident with going to
universities and preaching to them about
sexual harassment if the National Human
Rights Commission itself does not have the
policy framework on sexual harassment.”
He however advised those who have been
harassed to press charges and not allow
societal pressures or fear of victimisation
intimidate them from forging ahead force
with charges.
All effort to talk to the NUC proved abortive.
The commission did not reply email sent to
them. The NUC has nine contact phone
numbers on its website, only two of them
appear to be functional. However, several
calls to the two numbers were not answered
neither were they returned.
A double-edged sword
While sexual harassment in universities is
mostly viewed from the angle of male
philandering lecturers running after female
students, little is often spoken about female
students deliberately seducing male lecturers,
mainly for better grades.
A lecturer at LASU who spoke on condition of
anonymity said some female students offer
themselves to lecturers.
“If people know what we go through; the
number of times lecturers send female
students out of their offices. I know cases of
students who have volunteered to even pay
for a room in a guesthouse.”
Mr. Odinkalu, himself a former lecturer,
admitted female students were increasingly
harassing their lecturers.
“This may not be fashionable but sexual
harassment in universities is a two-way thing.
Many lecturers prey on student but some
students also do prey on lecturers. And I
think it’s necessary to acknowledge this. As I
said, it’s not fashionable. I’m not going to
win a lot of brownie points for saying this,”
he said.
Mr. Idris said one thing several universities
are doing is to discourage female students
from dressing provocatively.
“The female also sexually harass us in the
classroom. You’re teaching or conducting
exam and when you look up all the breasts
you have in the lecture hall are all exposed to
you. You are invigilating and as you’re
moving around half of all the buttocks are all
exposed to you by all the bare bottom trousers
they are wearing,” he said.