In the last two months, the university community has been awash with negative developments bordering on alleged cases of sex-for-marks levelled against lecturers in two of the country’s first generation universities in the Southwest. As the controversy rages on, Folashade Ajayi, the founder of Behind The Door Initiative, an NGO dedicated to campaigning against sexual violence speaks with Oyeniran Apata on the restriction of the Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Educational Institutions Prohibition Act, 2016 and calls for an expansion. Excerpts:
The Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Educational Institutions Prohibition Act, 2016 covers tertiary institutions and disregarded for students in secondary schools, harassment in homes and other units of the society. What is your reaction to this?
Though, I considered the bill a good development and in the right direction to address issues relating to sexual molestation at the ivory tower. However, I considered the bill as biased because it is not wide enough to cover a lot of grounds. It is too narrow to cover and make provision for people that are exposed to sexual harassment daily in our universities. The bill only makes a cover for the female students and the lecturer being the culprits. Above all, the lecturers as the main culprit also have other categories of workers within the academic community that sexually harass students.
From the admission officers that harass both sexes, to the records officers that are also neck deep in the harassment of prospective students. I am of the opinion that the scope of the bill should be extended to cover all these groups that have the tendency to harass or others that can be harassed sexually. We have cases of lecturers’ harassing fellow lecturer of opposite sexes; there are also the non-teaching staffs that are harassed by teaching staff in tertiary institutions. In view of this, I am of the opinion that everybody that works in that environment deserved to be protected; male or female. The scope of the bill should be widened to provide cover for all.
This social menace has become a daily affair because it has assumed a wider dimension in the society. Should the proponents of the bill make it cover Nigerians irrespective of creed or social standing?
Please recall that some years ago; there was a case of a proprietor of a private school that sexually harassed children put in his care. Beyond the tertiary institutions, in my opinion, the bill should cover other categories of Nigerians in offices, homes, neighbourhood, schools at all levels and in religious places of worship too.
What about the larger society where the issue is raging like a wildfire; uncles harassing nieces, father to child, what is your reaction to this as it affects the lives of scores of children that suffer stigmatization from this show of shame?
The only way to protect children from the prying eyes of the randy adults is through increased advocacy on sex education. Children should be thought how to keep their body intact and safe from the opposite or same sex.
We should teach our children that it is wrong for anyone to touch their genitals. By the time this is registered in their subconscious they will become aware and immediately call the attention of parents to moves by uncles and teachers to sexually harass them.
We should teach children not to collect gifts from anybody except those passed to them through their parents. Presentation of gifts is another way teacher and adults lure unsuspecting women or men. I advised young girls to go about with pepper spray to ward off sexual attacks. Also, when attacked instead of shouting help! Help! Rather a victim should shout fire in order to attract a good number of people because the shout of fire elicits spontaneous reaction than mere shout for help.
What would you say about the dress sense of students, youths, working-class women even in the religious arena too? Sex appears to be in the air and everywhere as people that are provocatively dressed will ordinarily attract attention and arouse negative judgment.
Are you aware that some parents are guilty of making purchases of these weird dresses for their female children, especially all in the name of fashion? Even the dress sense of many students, fathers and mothers are questionable at home.
For instance, a father who wears a torn knee-length trouser for a female child of four-year-old exposed to what they are not supposed to see at that tender age. This leaves some negative impression and imaginations in the girl’s thoughts. Children at that age are inquisitive and such enquiry will be sought from the wrong quarters. It begins with the parents.
The women that walk around the homes almost naked in the full glare of their male children create some images the poor might find difficult to decipher. They will become inquisitive in the wrong direction. For God sake where have the family values gone? Parents should adopt dress codes for themselves and the family. There are schools were parents that are provocatively dressed are turned back at gates.
In a depressed economy where everyone is struggling to make ends meet, how can we achieve a balance making ends meet and not falling for the lure of money?
In a depressed economy, students are caught in between maintaining body integrity and poverty of not being able to fend for themselves, buy learning materials, cloth themselves where such funds are not coming from their sponsors? How can this be achieved within the academic environment?
In a situation like this, students, male and females should think out of the box. They need to go the extra mile without losing body integrity or submitting to illicit flesh for money business to make a living within and off campus.
In student/lecturer relationships, who should be blamed? Is it the lecturer that is being harassed daily by students that are deficient in academics and appear in provocative dresses or the lecturer who is also depressed and takes advantage of an opportunity to lose steam?
Everybody has a share of the blame. Take this scenario; because you are hungry and walk to the market to steal foodstuff; being hungry should not make you a thief. The problem is the inability to take responsibilities and make a way out of hunger. If you are deficient in your academics a lecturer that is depressed would engage in barbaric acts to resolve the situation. Lecturers should be strong enough to resist love advances from female and male students. Also, the non-teaching staff in an academic environment should maintain body integrity.
Child sex abuse is punishable by death and chemical castration in Indonesia. In Nigeria, the reverse is the case as persons accused of this crime walk freely around, what is your take on this?
The truth of the matter is that law agencies also connive with offenders. Connivance by police should carry severe punishment than the offenders.
Culled from The Independent