Against the background of the recent sting reportage of sexual
harassment in Nigerian universities, with special focus on the
University of Lagos, I am surprised that many Nigerians are feigning
ignorance of the ravaging scourge of sex-for-mark practice which infests
our tertiary institutions. There was nothing new or too salacious about
the BBC report. There was nothing more fundamental revealed in the
report than what we had all been noticing and what had been hitherto
reported in both the mainstream and social media for a long time now.
Sexual harassment is as old as the university system itself and awarding
grades for sexual gratification has been an age-old reality that had
dogged the university system in Nigeria. So there was nothing new
revealed in the sting report by BBC. There was nothing to elicit the
kind of societal commotion the BBC report elicited.
Lest we walk away with a façade; sexual predation is not restricted to
the university system alone. It is not a malaise that happens only in
the tertiary institutions. In fact, increasing predilection to trade sex
for one favour or the other traverse all human sectors. It is a disease
that does not select its victims. It inflicts every sector, every age
range, every gender, every strata of the society and it is not
restricted to Nigeria alone. What becomes abhorrent and the reason why
its debilitating effects in the tertiary sector of the country’
educational system is generating s much furore is that it goes to churn
out graduates that hawk what someone derisively calls sexually
transmitted degrees and these hawkers go on to seize the critical
sectors of the country’s life and permeate such decay and rot that
have plagued the Nigerian society.
But there are so many misnomers about our most recent concern about
sexual harassment in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions. Apart from the
mistake we make by thinking that sexual harassment is restricted to our
educational sector, we are collectively misled into thinking that it is
about male lecturers preying on female students. That is a gargantuan
mistake. Female lecturers also prey on male students and most
importantly, with the upsurge of same-sex relationships sweeping through
the country, female lecturers also prey on female students to curry
sexual favour in exchange for marks. Even at that, in many cases, it is
the students that hawk sex to get grades from lecturers and this is very
important in trying to deal with this anomie. The tertiary institutions
in Nigeria are heavily padded with students who ought not be in the
university but who, one way or the other, find their ways in our
institutions and depend on hawking sex for grades. So in most of the
cases, female students generously trade sex for marks and we should take
this into cognizance in dealing with this issue.
Again, it is surprising that, because the University of Lagos was
employed for the sting reportage, many Nigerians wrongly feel it is a
scourge restricted to UNILAG. That is a naïve reasoning. The malaise is
much more entrenched in universities that do not hug the kind of
exposure and limelight UNILAG enjoys. It is a widespread nuisance that
requires a far-reaching solution to deal with. Also, it is wrong, as I
have already stated, to believe that it is a recent and restricted
anomie. It is neither recent nor is it restricted to tertiary
institutions alone. It ravages every area of human endeavor. We also
note that many parents are aware and encourage this dastardly act from
their wards as they share the noxious belief that the end justifies the
means.
Then also, the sex-for-grade vice operates alongside cash-for-grade
monster where students are equally required to trade cash for unearned
grades. Both combine to deal ruthlessly with the quality of the academia
and the emergent products of tertiary schools in Nigeria. The attendant
calamitous damage this deals with the society where these products are
unleashed is there for all to see.
Having said these, we, as a nation, must take the challenge the BBC
sting reportage presented us to start putting down durable measures to
curb the menace of sexual predation in our tertiary institutions, even
if it is for the purpose of safeguarding our degrees from being rightly
seen as sexually transmitted degrees with its attendant deleterious
effects on our educational system and the corrosive damage to our
nation. It is apt to say that sexual predation where lecturers prey on
students and students prey on lecturers has become an accepted norm in
Nigerian tertiary schools because there had been literarily no measures,
laws or statutes trusted to deal with this. With time, university
authorities have come to accept this as normal and have been lax in
dealing with the very few cases that get reported. This has made this
vice to flower to the extent that a lecturer makes indecent proposition
to a someone he is meeting for the first time, as the BBC sting
reportage revealed. Denying that it is exists or that it is widespread
is the hypocritical way authorities and staff employ to trivialize the
issue.
If we are desirous of dealing with this cankerworm, it is my honest
opinion that the government must come up and enforce stricter laws and
back it up with institutions, present n all campuses where cases could
be reported, investigated and quickly prosecuted to ensure that
culprits; both lecturers and students are adequately punished with
strict sentences that involve rustication and jailing. An agency should
be created for the purpose of tracking such cases and this agency should
have presence in all tertiary institutions.
Also, there should be greater attention to the quality of academe that
prevail in our tertiary institutions. Both lecturers and students need
to go through rigorous examinations both at the point of entry and in
the course of their duties to ensure that only those who qualify to be
at tertiary institutions both as lecturers and students find their ways
to these instructions. A situation where ill-qualified students and
lecturers predominate our schools makes trading sex for marks
inevitable.
The nation’s educational curriculum should be reviewed to ensure that
eternal examiners feauture more regularly in the course of studentship
to ensure that a student’s grades rhymes with his academic capacity.
Leaving single lecturers decide the fates of students have given room
for such illicit acts that flower trading sex for marks/ a student may
be called in the course of his studentship to defend his performance or
re-graded. Similarly, students must have inalienable rights to call up
for their papers and have them re-assessed where they feel victimized
for reasons of refusing to trade sex for grades.
To help deal with this scourge, unions and trade groups such as
Students’ Union Governments, ASUU, NASU, etc, should be firmed up,
encouraged to monitor this anomie in the various campuses and deploying
such multi-pronged measures will not only ensure that guilty lecturers
are tracked but also ensure innocent lecturers are not targeted by randy
students for persecution. The intra campus unions should also be
equipped with capacities to name and shame lecturers engaged in such
practices.
It is my firm opinion that when the right and qualified students are
admitted to the university and right and qualified lecturers recruited
into the tertiary school system, the abhorrent practice of trading sex
for marks will be greatly reduced so both the government and the various
school authorities need to do more than they are doing at present to
ensure that only the right and qualified people end up in our tertiary
schools.
As I have said earlier, the tertiary institution is just one of the many
sectors ravaged by sexual predation. However, it is understandable why
the issue of sex for grade in tertiary schools should generate concern
as it has the capacity to vitiate the quality of education and extend
very corrosive effects on the larger society.
My honest feeling is that sexual predation thrives in our tertiary
intuitions because the systems prevalent in these intuitions tolerate it
and have engraved it into the curriculum of these schools. Dealing with
this malaise has ramained elusive because there is a guarded code
binding staff and administrators to protect randy lecturers and not rock
the boat. This has made it impossible to prosecute randy lecturers that
trade sex for academic grades. Faced with the frustration that has been
engendered by this ingrained we-feeling by university staff, students
have been made to resign to fate rather than pursue cases of sexual
predation by randy lecturers and vice versa. So, the present concern
sparked off by the BBC sting reportage offers the nation the best chance
to deal with this anomie and rid our educational system the lurid charge
of trading in sexually transmitted digress
Peter ClaverOparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com