Senators approve bill aimed at ending sexual harassment in institutions of higher learning

SENATORS have granted initial approval to a bill that prescribes five-year jail terms for lecturers who engage in sexual relationship with students as part of a drive to combat sexual harassment on Nigeria's tertiary institutions.

 

Nigerian institutions of higher learning are notorious for sexual harassment with lectures taking advantage of female students and cases of impropriety rife. Keen to address the matter, senators have decided to act and yesterday, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege from Delta Central sponsored a bill that would end such acts and it passed its second reading yesterday having got the support of 46 senators.

 

Proposing the bill, Senator Omo-Agege said that the nation’s institutions of higher learning must be sanitised to rid them of lecturers who saw female students as prize. He added that when the bill is passed and signed into law, any lecturer found guilty will be liable to a jail term of up to five years but not less than two years with no option of fine.

 

Senator Omo-Agege said: “When passed into law, it makes it a criminal offence for any educator in a university, polytechnic or any other tertiary educational institution to violate or exploit the student-lecturer fiduciary relationship for sexual pleasures. The bill imposes stiff penalties on offenders in its overall objective of providing tighter statutory protection for students against sexual hostility and all forms of sexual harassment in tertiary schools.

 

“The bill provides a compulsory five-year jail term for lecturers who sexually harass students. When passed into law, vice chancellors of universities, rectors of polytechnics and other chief executives of institutions of higher learning will go to jail for two years if they fail to act within a week on complaints of sexual harassment made by students."

 

He added that the bill expressly allows sexually harassed students, their parents or guardians to seek civil remedies in damages against sexual predator lecturers before or after their successful criminal prosecution by the state. In addition, he stressed that the bill also seeks to protect, from sexual harassment, prospective students seeking admissions into institutions of learning, students of generally low mental capacity and physically challenged students.

 

According to the lawmaker, it was practicable in other climes as honour codes but stressed that it should be domesticated in Nigeria in the penal form. Also, the bill has provisions to sanction students who falsely accuse lecturers of sexual harassment, who could face dismissal from the school but no jail term was prescribed.

 

Furthermore, according to the bill, the only exemption is where the student is legally married to the lecturer before admission in the school as a student. In addition, the bill also imposes on institutions the responsibility to protect students who initiate a sexual harassment charge.